Co-chair Greg Nelson called the meeting to order at 12:40 pm. There were 18 members present plus 7 on Zoom. David Birkenstein introduced his guest Addie Ruey, a Winnetka resident for 30 years, and former member of the WCH Board and former employee of the old Continental Bank. Also present was Lyle Staub, past District Governor of Rotary, who presented our Club with a banner in recognition of it having the largest per member financial contributions to Rotary from within our entire District this last year. He also reviewed important parts of the District’s Strategic Plan for the years 2021-2024 which included encouraging more fellowship among Clubs and the District, publicizing that Rotary is a service and philanthropic organization, encouraging clubs to consider service projects in lieu of meal meetings, and growing membership by 10% a year and retention by 20% a year.
Club membership anniversaries included Mary Lou Bilder (honorary) 26 years, Rodg Morris 49 years, and Amy Skalinder 2 years.
ANNOUNCEMENTS: The Club received a very nice “thank you” from Christina Calderon, Director of Development at Good News Partners, for our project of delivering 100 grocery bags of food to needy area families for Thanksgiving; Greg mentioned that the Club is considering a Christmas donation to our caterer; Fred Schwimmer said he would be leaving for his winter trip to Florida but that he would continue to remain active in our meetings by Zoom because the Club’s philanthropy is very important to him; Barb gave a special thanks to Rich, David Grant, Moha, Sylwia (and husband) for helping shop, collect and distribute the bags of groceries for our Thanksgiving project—Barb also reminded attendees that her Volunteer Services group has many projects and organizations that accept gifts/donations throughout the holiday season, including such groups as Lambs Farm, Beacon Place and local food pantries—December 6th is the deadline for most of these contributions; and Greg announced that the New Trier High School swing choir will again be providing the lunch entertainment at our December 16th meeting. Barb added some information about the catalytic converter thefts occurring on the North Shore, including her own Prius—and that there are now shields available to prevent such thefts.
HAPPY BUCKS: Bob Baker, Moha and, Bill Leske made donations in recognition of all the coats our Club has given children through libraries on Chicago’s South Side and Rogers Park.
SPEAKER DONNA GULLEY—SHELTER BOX AMBASSADOR. Donna is a Northbrook Rotary member who has travelled and spoken extensively on the activities of the Shelter Box (SB) organization. Rotary is now a partner with SB and is its biggest fund raiser. There are a couple different sizes of boxes but they provide housing and living needs for people throughout the world who lose their homes through natural disasters and other causes. Currently there are thousands of these SB being used as housing in such countries as Burma, Haiti, Syria, Ethiopia and Mozambique. There are over 200 distribution points for these SB materials with the United Kingdom being the central location. As of March of this year, there were 113 million people using these SB who were displaced due to natural disasters and over 84 million people using them who were displaced due to political conflict. Donna said that the SB slogan is to “serve to change lives”. In addition to financial support, there are many volunteer opportunities to help support SB programs, such as serving on one of its response teams. Donna’s power point was very informative and will be available soon on our Club’s list of Rotary meeting presentations.
Questions were taken and then Greg adjourned the meeting at 1:30 with the recitation of the Rotary 4-way test.