A few weeks into the Rotary year 2020-2021 and I have come to appreciate that there are many moving parts to Rotary at all levels-- our local club, the district, and Rotary International. This should not have come as a surprise as our Rotary logo is a wheel with 6 spokes, 24 teeth, and has a keyway that guarantees it transmits power.
Personally, I feel like I'm on a bicycle and am standing up to gain momentum, some speed. And I don't want to lose my footing on the pedals-- slipping off them would be quite a jolt! So I am asking you to help me while together we gain speed, balance and can get down the road gracefully.
While we are meeting online, please picture your fellow Rotarians... with whom did you regularly sit in Brookside's dining room? who was by your side at fellowship events and service projects? whose "Happy Dollars" always made you smile?
Bring them to mind and then, please, reach out. I have come to see what a luxury it has been to quietly say to someone next to you at the coffee bar, "How have you been? How is your family?"
If you haven't been in contact with someone for a while: Phone them. Text them. Send them a card.
Our website has members' names, addresses, and phone numbers. The tech-savvy among us have downloaded the Club Runner app to their smartphones for easy access to this information. If technology fails you, phone or email me and I will look it up for you.
Let's not let a global pandemic get in the way of real Rotary Fellowship.
We continue our weekly meeting virtually! There will not be an in person meeting this week but we sure would love to see your smiling face when you join us online! Stay tuned for updates next week as we prepare to meet in person at Brookside Country Club on Thursday, September 10, 2020. We will be sure to offer our members to join in virtually as well.
Please use the link below to join us this Thursday, September 3, 2020 at 7:30 a.m.
We still encourage you to invite a virtual guest to help introduce Rotary to someone who could make a great Rotarian. Simply share the link provided in the red section below with your guest. Ask them to please sign in as - their name (guest of) - in the name field so we know who they were invited by.
To enter the virtual meeting, just click this link or copy and paste it into your URL Browser. Please note that you will need Firefox or Google Chrome as your browser to join the meetings.
2) Scroll down on the sign in page and you will see the list of recorded meetings under "Public Room Recordings".
3) Click on the blue presentation button of the meeting you'd like to view. 4) Click on the triangle shaped play button at the bottom left of the screen to play the recording.
This Thursday, July 23, 2020, the Emmaus Rotary Board will meet online following our virtual club meeting which begins at 7:45 a.m.
The weather is too unpredictable to plan on meeting on the lovely patio at Brookside Country Club. So, until the Commonwealth's current restriction on the size of groups which can meet indoors rises, we will meet as a club on-line on Thursdays. This is not ideal. But, it is the best we can do for now during the Covid19 pandemic.
The Board agenda includes accepting the 2020-2021 budget, voting on the name presented from the nominating committee for the position of Second Vice-President, and continuing to develop fundraising strategies to support our work in the Rotary year 2021-2022. All members are welcome to attend and enter questions or concerns in the chatbox.
Here’s something you don’t want to miss especially if you are having difficulty finding good news in the headlines of today’s current events.
The Rotary Foundation Trustees and Rotary International Board of Directors have unanimously approved adding a new area of focus -- this will be the seventh.
The first six are:
Peacebuilding and conflict prevention
Disease prevention and treatment
Water, sanitation, and hygiene
Maternal and child health
Basic education and literacy
Community economic development
And, now, (drumroll……)
Supporting the environment
This is a big one, Folks. We can hold recycling, educational and informational events. We can plant more trees. We can look at our group’s and our individual carbon footprints. We can find ways to use less plastic.
Dream and scheme with me. How might Emmaus Rotary respond? How can we serve “Mother Earth”?
Here’s a fun start. Which of the 3 green emojis works for you? The green tree? The blue and green globe? The green recycling arrows?
If you click the link below to see more, you will get the details from Rotary International’s announcement of this multi-million dollar venture. I, personally, don’t think Rotary has been this bold since we committed to eradicating polio- and “we’re this close”.
Pass along to friends, family, business owners and golfers.
Remember that for this year only we’re offering special COVID pricing. Any support will be greatly appreciated.
Raffle tickets are now available! See Eric Loch or Don Blose to purchase yours and/or to help sell tickets.
Raffle tickets are only $50 per ticket! ONLY 300 to be sold! 1st Prize - A solid 14kt Yellow Gold Bangle Bracelet with .50ctw Diamonds! A $4,700 value!
2nd Prize - $1,000 Gift Card for State Store Alcohol!
69,000 of our neighbors in the Lehigh Valley are predicted to go hungry this year. Help them with your garden, one pound at a time!
It is almost the end of the growing season in our gardens. Tony Moyer continues to collect your Plant A Row produce donations on Thursdays. You can drop off your donations at Willow Lane Elementary School by 4:00 pm. (6135 Sauerkraut Lane, Macungie, PA 18062) Please simply leave your bagged and freshly washed veggies at the front door of the school. All of food collected goes to the 6th St. Shelter.
If you'd like to bring your donations to our in person meetings, Sue Wenner has volunteered to serve with Tony on the Plan A Row Collection Committee and would be happy to drop off our weekly collections to the school after our meeting. If you have any questions please contact Tony at anmoyer1229@yahoo.com
Thank you Tony and Sue for volunteering!
To learn more about Plant A Row continue reading...
Thank you to Ai Orthodontics for their absolutely incredible generosity! Dr. Aejaaz A. Issa and his team have donated $3,000 to the Emmaus Rotary Club, East Penn Food Program, Go Fund Me campaign. This kindness has brought us to 25% of our current fundraising goal for the program. Many thanks to Karen Hobson for sharing the Go Fund Me campaign with Dr. Issa. Ai Orthodontics has been a huge supporter of Emmaus Rotary. We are very grateful for community business partners like Ai Orthodontics who lead through service above self.
Does this inspire you to give? Start YOUR team! Since we started in July we have raised $4,255 of our $10,000 Go Fund Me Campaign goal to support The Emmaus Rotary Club, East Penn Food Program. As I have written before, it is important that our Club Members get involved in sharing this campaign so that we can reach our goal of $10,000. Donating and sharing is VERY easy and with just a few seconds a week, together we will make our goal! (If you need instructions on how to donate follow the steps in the read more section on how you can donate and share)
SHARING IS REALLY IMPORTANT FOR THIS CAMPAIGN TO GAIN MOMENTUM. Creating your own fundraising page as part of the campaign is a great way to invite your family, friends, co-workers, clients, and others to join you in our mission to help feed hungry children!
How to do it:
1) Click the blue JOIN button.
2) Sign in - follow the prompts to create an account or log in with Facebook if you have one.
3) Click the blue JOIN THE TEAM button. This will automatically make you a member of the team. Regardless of donation amount. You can donate whatever amount you'd like even $10 puts us closer to our goal. EVERY single dollar matters! You can create a team without donating (I tested this on my husband's cell phone to join the team it took 5 second to do) The goal here is create a page to engage your network and share the information to attract donors.
4) Now share your link! You can share multiple ways. Facebook, Twitter or copy your link and past it into an email to go out to your clients, workplace, family, friends, and other organizations your a member of. Remember to share often on your social media pages! Please consider creating a team for your business.
It's that simple. An easy way for "People of Action" like us to....well...take action!
If you need help with how to share you may reach out to me and I will do my very best to walk you through it or think of some creative ways you can help spread the word.
I have included an email that I sent out to another board that I sit on. Feel free to use it! Just click "read more" below.
If you have questions on how to use Go Fund Me please contact Meghan Reed 610-797-5942 / meghanreed517@gmail.com THANK YOU!!
Last week while we enjoyed the fresh air and beautiful scenery of the Brookside Country Club Patio we learned about the unique way that Zeke Zelker is changing the way kids approach nutrition, exercise and mindfulness through his program Art Spark.
Picture an auditorium of 3rd - 5th graders. Now picture those kids enthusiastically learning about how they can make more mindful decisions about exercise, nutrition and all around well being. Students are talking about constructive ways to handle feelings like depression and anger and how to deal with bullying. Picture this room filled with kids who are dancing and playing trivia games, there is a live artist creating art to reflect what they are learning about. And it gets better! Later these kids get to make art themselves inspired by all the things they have learned! There is nothing passive about this educational experience! Zeke and his team are getting these kids excited about learning how to live creative healthy lives EARLY. Sounds fun doesn't it! 14,000 kids have benefited from this experience! Sound like something you could get behind? Click read more to get all the details of how Art-Spark works its magic! Be sure to check out their website too! There are some great videos about the program. http://www.artspark.us/
Zeke also happens to be one of Mike Waddell favorite past graduates of Emmaus High School. It was fun to see how proud Mike is of all the achievements Zeke has had in his career and the difference he is now making to students.
Get more details about the Art Spark Program by clicking "read more"
Gary Rohrbach has an awesome idea for our Club! See how he and Valarie Deneen are spearheading a new digital project.
Part of the legacy which Emmaus Rotary Club has is a collection of Banners from various Rotary Clubs. The first time that I went to a Emmaus Rotary meeting was in 1982 and it was held at Pine Tree Tavern. One of the things which most impressed me was that in front of the room there were 8 or 10 Rotary Banner Boards. Each board had about 20 separate banners from various Rotary Clubs from around the world. Each banner was either given to the club from a visiting Rotarian or was from one of our members who had made up a meeting at another club or it was given as an exchange for one of our banners. Having these banners is one way in which Rotary connects the world.
For every meeting that was held at Pine Tree Tavern, at Marcels Restaurant, at the Mercantile Club and other sites where we had met over the years, the banner boards were displayed. When we started to have our meetings at Brookside Country Club there was no room to store the boards from one week to the next so we had to take them elsewhere to be stored. Fortunately for the club, Dale Dries offered to store them at his store. Recently the banner boards have been used only for special occasions like the visit of a Friendship team and last year's District Conference as Emmaus Rotary was the host club.
A new project which we hope to complete is to have an item on our website in which we display photos of the banners and possibly a sentence or 2 about each. For example, we have banners from Clubs who we have had Group Study Exchanges, Friendship Exchanges, Student Exchanges, etc.
Gary Rohrbach is forming a committee to set an agenda to accomplish this task and will Chair the committee. Valarie Deneen and her daughter Emily have volunteered to help the committee with organizing our digital efforts. For example, utilizing the Google Photos search function that uses artificial intelligence and text recognition to search for text or imagery within photos. A search for dogs, for instance, will bring up any drawings, photos, or text mentions of dogs in the album. This will make our work MUCH easier! We will later be able link our 90 banner images directly to the Club website for all to see.
If you are interested in joining the Digital Banner Committee please either send an email to glrohrbach@gmail.com or call his cell # 610-428-6766.
For all the wine lovers out there, here is a way to give back. Do you need to stock up on wine? Do you have gifts to buy and not sure what to get? Here is a great way to raise funds for the Food Insecure Children of East Penn School District.
All wine profits made during the month of July, will be given to the Emmaus Rotary Club's Food Packing Program. That’s right, all profits made on all sales will go back to the Rotary!
What is Scout & Cellar – it’s a Clean-Crafted Wine, free from chemicals and added sugars. It’s grown naturally, bottled consciously and packed sustainable making it better tasting and better for our planet. Best part, it can be delivered straight to your door. To learn more and order your wine go to www.scoutandcellar.com/dczayaitz.
On Thursday, July 30 we are installing an engraved brick at the Emmaus Remembrance Garden for Rotarian Jerry Friedman. Those interested in attending will meet at the Remembrance Garden at 9:00 a.m. for a short ceremony where we meet any of Jerry's family who may be in attendance, say a few words of remembrance about Jerry and install his brick in the Rotary walkway area. This typically takes 15-20 minutes and all Rotarians are invited to attend. A special thanks to Bob Halsey for coordinating this gathering.
The Emmaus Remembrance Garden is located at 150 E. Main Street, Emmaus, PA 18049
Rotary District 7430 Virtual Changeover Celebration
Monday, July 27, 2020
7:00 pm
This year's District Changeover is going virtual!! Mark your calendars and join us on Monday, July 27, 2020 at 7:00 pm. We are planning a fun event recognizing and celebrating the many accomplishments of our district clubs during 2019-2020. Governor Herb will be presenting Rotary Citation winners, Rotary Foundation awards, and Youth Service Award winners. There may even be some surprises and special guests. We hope every club in D7430 will be represented at this special event.
Weekly Door Prize Donations Needed! Be our next meeting's prize sponsor!
It seems like we all like the idea of winning a festive prize at our meetings (in person or online). We have had some very generous and fun donations over the past few months since incorporating this new aspect to our meetings. Many thanks to all who have donated a prize! It is a nice way to give back to each other while doing some low-key networking for your business. In the wake of the Corona Virus now more than ever it's important to show the local businesses in our community we care and support them. They have shown us support with raffle donations and sponsorships throughout the years. Consider purchasing a $20.00 gift card from one of the many small businesses in the East Penn Area. As we know every little bit helps. It's also a great way to start a conversation about Rotary and invite business owners and managers to a club meeting. Please contact Meghan Reed for more information about our weekly door prizes and how you can be help!
Upcoming Committee Meetings: Consider holding a virtual meeting to stay in touch and on task with your committee!
(Does your committee have an upcoming meeting? Let Meghan know and we will list it here)
Rotary and Beyond:
If you are participating in a fundraiser outside of Rotary and would like help spreading the word to our club members please contact Meghan Reed. It may be eligible to run in our new section in the Trumpet called "Rotary and Beyond". It will cost $2.00 (Happy Dollars) each time you'd like to run the information in the Trumpet. To have the information posted in the Trumpet you must be an active committee member or board member of the non-profit organization facilitating the activity outside of Rotary participation. The $2.00 entry may be given to Meghan at a club meeting. Contact Meghan with any questions.
COVID-19 is impacting us all in our personal, professional and Rotary lives. We must base our decisions about Rotary activities on the health and safety of our members and compliance with government and health regulations. Even though we may not be able to conduct the usual weekly in person meetings, many of our clubs are leading or participating in food and other relief programs in their communities. These efforts will likely be continuing through the balance of this Rotary year and into the future.
With this in mind, the following are guidelines for all Rotary District 7430 activities:
All guidelines set forth by the Governor, counties and other authorized persons in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the CDC should be followed.
Should any Rotarian be diagnosed with or have symptoms that they suspect to be consistent with COVID-19, that Rotarian shall:
Not participate in any Rotary event that involves a personal appearance at the event.
Report their diagnoses or symptoms to the Rotarian supervising any program in which they have participated in-person within fourteen (14) days before the diagnoses or occurrence of symptoms.
We also suggest that you adopt guidelines for your clubs that reflect the current health crisis.
Welcome to the Emmaus Rotary Club!
We meet at 7:30 AM on Thursday mornings
at Brookside Country Club, 901 Willow Lane, Macungie, PA 18062
