Boothbay Harbor Rotary Club

Tue, 04/02/2019 - 1:00pm

Rotary’s last meeting for the month of March hosted Sheila Rollins, a Rotarian since 2006 and our district governor in 2015-16. Sheila started as the Interact chair for her club, and has since become the Rotaract chair for the entire Rotary district. She presented on her trip to Puerto Rico with our District’s Rotaracters.

Rotaract is Rotary’s young professional arm, made up of ages 18-30 and with a local Rotary Club as a sponsor. Rotaract Clubs are independent from their Rotary Club, and have their own projects. Our District only has two Rotaract Clubs – one at St. Joseph’s College and one at the University of New Hampshire. It is common for colleges to be hubs for Rotaract Clubs.

Sheila led a group of Rotaract members down to Puerto Rico, a place that still needs a lot of help after Hurricanes Irma, Harvey and Maria. While FEMA has helped over 400,000 people, more than 600,000 were out of reach and still needed help rebuilding. The Rotaract Clubs collaborated with Pathstone, which helps low-income families with workforce development, housing support and community development. Working with Pathstone is an effective and efficient method to help, due to the fact that the organization’s infrastructure was already in place to help rebuild communities. Pathstone needed volunteers to help fill in the gaps not covered by contractors, which involved a lot of clean-up.

More local Rotaracters will be going down to Puerto Rica again in six weeks to help build homes.

The meeting was presided over by Irene in Alice’s absence, and we welcomed several guests – Laurie Zimmerli brought alone Anne, Craig Tukey introduced his friend George, and we welcomed back Larkin. Melanie Green brought along her husband, Richard, who we are affectionately calling “Phil” until his official induction as a new member.

There were many announcements, starting off with a thank-you for Alice Mutch, John Hochstein and Mike Thompson, who helped out with the club’s well. Irene announced that she is happy to help train others on the A/V system any time. Laurie said the Auction Committee has been hard at work getting sponsor letters together, and wanted to thank Monica for all of her help stuffing envelopes — every little bit helps! Daren wanted to remind everyone to be careful in the driveway, which is still healing. Doug Harley announced that we will be doing onion sales again this year — make sure to get your orders in by April 26. Onions will be picked up around the 16th of May. Lastly, Foster needed an extra set of hands for serving for the Lifetime Service Award night. Please check out the People Power list to see where you can help.

Coming right up on April 6 is the District Training, which you can sign up for online.

April 11th is our annual Soup Bowl Supper with the Watershed Center for the Arts and Rebuilding Together at the Legion hall. Come see Tory if you have not yet signed up for the event — it’s all hands on deck to host our 200 guests for some great causes and wonderful, homemade soup!

April 24th will be a lunch hosted at Bath Regional Career and Technical Center where we have 10 seats reserved for the club. Sign up with Alice or Irene to claim one asap!