ANNOUNCEMENTS
(notes provided by the erudite, Mary Hodson)
The March 13 meeting will be cancelled in favor of the March 12 All Rotary Area Meeting at Round Barn.
The next EIFB food truck distribution will be in Bement on January 25. Sign up at the website or by contacting Phillip.
Contact Erik Batsie if you are interested in joining Rantoul “Bowl for Kids Sake”
RYLA will be held on April 11-13. Please contact Andrew if you can help with mock job interviews on the 12th.
Rod announced that his business will have an open house Tuesday from 4-6 PM.
PROGRAM
Mary introduced Dennis Roberts, member of the Urbana City Council and chair of the Sister City Committee.
Sister Cities International was started during the Eisenhower Administration. Eisenhower believed that governments were too big to accomplish peace, but individuals could. The program is autonomous and independent. It costs $450 per year for a city to belong to the program and it receives 15% of its income from the U.S. State Department.
The program got started in Urbana when a U of I graduate student whose father was mayor of E Mei,China, contacted Dennis. After establishing the first sister city relationship, Dennis became aware of the Urbana First Presbyterian Church’s relationship with Malawi.
Malawi, located in South East Africa, is one of the smallest and poorest nations of Africa. The per capita income is $250. Rotarian Don Mason, pastor of the Urbana Presbyterian Church, along with his congregation, erected a church in the village of Domasi, near Zomba, and with the help of villagers, have dug over 700 shallow wells in the area. These wells have drastically reduced the incidence of diphtheria and cholera.
Through the church, Dennis established a sister city relationship with the villagers of Domasi. The City of Urbana has since applied for and received two $100,000 Gates Foundation grants. The first was used to put toilets in the Domasi school and to build an absolution block, with toilets, showers and laundry at the hospital.
The second grant was to be used to foster a professional exchange between two sister cities. People from Domasi traveled to E. Mei China to see their waste management plant and officials from E. Mei traveled to Domasi.
For its efforts, Urbana was named the 2012 Sister City of the Year. Now they are working on establishing another sister city relationship, this time with a small town in France.
Dennis invited us to attend the Sister City Committee meetings, held on the third Wednesday of each month at the City Building and the State of Illinois Sister City Association annual meeting, which will be held at the Landmark Hotel on April 12-13,2014.
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| Jan 23rd | Jan 30th | Feb 6th | Feb 13th | |
| Introductions | Ed Perry | BJ Lytle | Ben Mast | John McDaniel |
| Invocation | Cary Woolard | Kris Young | Harold Adams | Amanda Alleman |
| Greeters | Ed Perry | BJ Lytle | Ben Mast | John McDaniel |
| Mitch Schluter | Jen Shelby | Lou Simpson | Jeff Van Buren | |
| Song Leader | Ed Perry | Marsha Reardon | Rod Roberts | Tod Satterthwaite |
| Notetaker | Ed Perry | Conforti | Chamberlain | Perry |
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Upcoming Schedule
January 23rd – Rick Schoell, former Executive Director for External Relations for the University of Illinois
January 30th – Christine Catanzarite, Director, OLLI at UIUC will discuss the history of the Oscars
February 6th – TBD
February 13th – TBD
February 20th – Patrick Mackay, President, 004 Technologies USA
February 27th – Dr. Irfan Ahmad will discuss the history of Islam, the local Muslim community, and the Avicenna Community Health Center
March 6th – TBD
March 13th – Dr. Stephen Boppart, Bliss Professor of Engineering at UIUC
