“Fear is not your enemy. It is a compass pointing you to the areas where you need to grow.” – Steve Pavlina – Author

 

“Never mistake motion for action.” – Ernest Hemingway – 1899-1961 – American Novelist

 

“There is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.” – Amanda Gorman – American poet, activist

 

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

(notes provided by the distinguished gentleman from Connecticut, Ed Perry)

 

Current President-Elect Ed Bridges is currently looking for a member to become our President-Elect for Rotary year 2022/2023. Contact Eddy for more information. 

 

Michelle announced that this year’s Read Across America will be done online.  Since its launch in March 1998, our club has participated with in-person reading of books to children and we wish to continue it remotely this year. With Darrell’s help our club will video club members reading and forward it to Read Across America to be shown on March 2, 2021. Contact Michelle for more information and to volunteer. 

 

February Bucket Bucks are going to ShelterBox. 

 

Champaign Rotary Club is holding a large Zoom meeting on Monday, February 22nd with new University of Illinois football coach Bret Bielema. It is open to the public with a capacity of 500 with advanced registration required.  Advance registration will be required through DACdb. Please use this link:

https://www.dacdb.com/Register4/Index.cfm?EventID=77519077&UserID=800637025

 

 

PROGRAM

 

Charlie introduced our speaker this morning, Tom Hodson a Champaign West Rotary Club member since 1986, Past President of Champaign West and husband of Mary Hodson. Tom is also our Rotary District’s 6490 representative for ShelterBox USA and Disaster Relief.  

 

Tom’s video presentation portion of his presentation showed examples and explained the global impact ShelterBox has had in the 20+ years since it was founded.  ShelterBox provides humanitarian relief and aid in the form of materials, equipment, and tools that provide shelter and comfort for displaced people and families.  Here is the link to the ShelterBox 20 Years Video:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PdENQIlvo5DMTfH1tdRrPBCkQbynvRDE/view

 

Tom also noted how ShelterBox has adapted to further help and focus on the current needs brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Seeing the need for the families who would rather not be relocated from their destroyed homes to large groups/camps, ShelterBox is now also sending Kits.  These Kits not only enable the family to maintain the proper social distancing, each Kit can be tailored to include materials and equipment for a specific disaster and the local home site. Kits can include shelter materials, personal aid materials, water containers and filtering, solar lighting and lanterns, wash basins and soap. They are packaged to be more easily delivered and carried to remote areas and at an overall lower cost. 

 

Among the many natural disasters, climate disasters, civil wars and humanitarian conflicts around the world, Tom gave examples of the places that ShelterBox served in 2020. These include Vanuatu, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Philippines, India, Pakistan, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Somaliland and Syria.  

 

ShelterBox serves more people today than ever before and the need continues to grow. 

 

 

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  Feb 11th Feb 18th Feb 25th Mar 4th
         
Reflection Scott Paceley Robb Patton Jerry Payonk Allan Penwell
Notetaker Hodson Conforti Perry Perry

—

 

UPCOMING SCHEDULE (with program committee member responsible listed in parentheses)

*All meetings via Zoom unless otherwise noted*

 

February 11th – Kellie Anderson, Director, Family Service Retired & Senior Volunteer Program (Mary)

February 18th – Lindsey Kerr, Executive Director of LifeLine Pilots (Ondine)

February 25th – D’Chyna Deen, Champaign Housing Authority, will tell us about their Youth Build program (Mary)

March 4th – TBD (Bob)

March 11th – Robin Stapf, Training and Recruitment Coordinator, Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) (Cary)

March 18th – TBD (Charlie)

March 25th – Albert E. Jenner, Jr. Professor of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Director of the Illinois Program in Constitutional Theory, History, and Law will discuss the First Amendment (Tom)

April 1st – TBD

April 8th – TBD

April 15th – TBD

April 22nd – TBD

April 29th – TBD