President Ken Drummet opened the meeting and welcomed everyone. Our greeter, David Birkenstein, welcomed his wife Mary and Ken’s in-laws Lee and Charlie Nielsen, as guests. Vicki Bittar also brought a colleague, Nicoleta Lobont, as a guest today. Barb Tubekis shared a thought for the day from Robin Williams.
Announcements:
Ken shared that a couple of people from our Club will be attending the required Grant Management meeting so we will be in compliance for our Morocco grant.
Amy reminded everyone about an opportunity to learn about cybersecurity at a Community House workshop next week. It’s Thursday, February 12, 10am-12pm, right before our weekly Rotary meeting. Register here ($25/person).
Chuck shared some amazing groaner jokes for Dig-N-Grin.
Moha was our speaker for the day and shared updated information about our Global Grant project in Morocco. Our objective is to create a cooperative to empower women and girls with reliable equipment – sewing, embroidery, and heat press machines – and business training. Our hope is to initially engage about 60 women, supporting them in creating a sustainable, revenue-generating cooperative that can survive beyond the initial grant period.
We are partnering with a local Rotary Club as well as the Association of Timoulilt for Development, which Moha participated in founding. It is a non-religious, non-political non-profit, and their work is focused on education, training, and economic development. They have experience in successfully forming other cooperatives.
The timeline for the project is as follows:
Month 1: mobilization and equipment set-up
Months 2-6: training on machines and equipment
Months 7-10: training in business management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, financial management, and legal requirements for setting up a cooperative
Months 11-12: creation of the cooperative and start of full operations
Moha also shared reflections on his recent visit to Morocco, when in addition to visiting Timoulilt, he was also able to visit with local leaders and dignitaries. Plans are underway for a 10-day Rotary trip from our District to Morocco in the future. Moha will continue to share updated with our Club as the project progresses.
The meeting concluded with our usual recitation of the Four-Way Test.
Our Club’s charitable foundation, the Winnetka-Northfield Rotary Charitable Foundation, recently completed our annual Community Grants process. We are pleased to report that this year with a budget of $18,000, we awarded 12 grants to local non-profit organizations that serve our community.
The Winnetka-Northfield Rotary Club is collaborating with the Wilmette and Evanston Lighthouse clubs to prepared bagged lunches forConnections for the Homeless; a monthly event, on the first Tuesday of the month at 6:00PM. Location is St. Joseph's church at Lake and Ridge in Wilmette. Sign up for this months event here:
312 626 6799; Meeting ID: 198 435 237; Password: 798428 (note, if asked for User ID, press #).
Reminder- you can give happy bucks, dig n grin, birthday donations and other donations to our foundation at https://wnrotary.org/page/donate/ or by texting DIGNGRIN to 44-321.
The Rotary Club of Winnetka-Northfield is teaming up with The Rotary Foundation and the Rotary Club of Rabat in the capital city of Morocco to establish a women's clothing cooperative in the village of Tomoulilt. This will be a project funded in part with a Rotary Foundation Global Grant (GG#2571461).
The program's objectives are to:
Create a revenue-generating cooperative run by stakeholders of village women/girls;
Empower women to run and manage a long-term sustainable and profitable business operation.
The project funds new equipment and training for the cooperative's participants. Training will encompass technical use of the equipment, entrepreneurial skills, business planning and management, sales and marketing planning, and financial management. The program's vision is to create a self-sustaining long term business enterprise for the participating women in Timoulilt.
Overall program budget is $100,000. The club is seeking cash and District Designated Funds (DDF) support from Rotary Clubs and Districts.
At the March 6 meeting, Rich Lalley presented an overview of the work of our two foundations- the Winnetka-Northfield Rotary Foundation (WNRCF) and The Rotary Foundation (TRF) of Rotary International. You can review that presentation here.
The club's board has set a goal of achieving 100% participation in supporting TRF this Rotary Year. To reach this goal, every active member needs to donate a minimum of $25 to The Rotary Foundation. You can do this online by clicking here.
We also aspire to be a 100% Paul Harris Fellow Club. For member who are not yet a Paul Harris Fellow, once your donation level reaches $250 and you have made a contribution this year, our club will celebrate you with a Paul Harris Fellow Award.
We appreciate all of our members who have contributed generously to The Rotary Foundation and to our club's WNRCF foundation. Thank you!
Paul Harris Fellows
Bob Baker, Wes Baumann, David Birkenstein*, Moha Boucha, Debra Campbell, Ken Drummet, Tom Evans, David Grant*, Tony Kambich*, Marie Kuipers, Rich Lalley, Bill Leske, Robert Mardirossian, Ned Meisner, Chuck Norton, Lee Padgitt, ArLynn Presser, Fred Schwimmer*, Heidi Sibert, Peter Skalski, Liz Taylor, Barb Tubekis, Patti Van Cleave.
Bold indicates donation made this Rotary Year. * indicates Major Donor.
The club's board has set a goal of achieving 100% participation in supporting TRF this Rotary Year. To reach this goal, every active member needs to donate a minimum of $25 to The Rotary Foundation. You can do this online by clicking here.
