Sunday, November 23 Rotary Club of Wilmette - Morning of Gratitude - Village Clean up Event -- Join us Sunday November 23 from 10 am to 11:30 am for the opportunity to express our gratitude for our community by working together collecting trash and debris around our Village Center. Family and friends are invited. Look for the Rotary blue tent in front of the Village Hall 1200 Wilmette Ave. If your schedule is tight, feel free to stop by for a cup of coffee. If you have questions, contact Ben Ivory benjamindivory@gmail.com
Thanksgiving Day Ceremony -
Every year on Thanksgiving day, Member Jim Pockross, conducts a Ceremony of Gratitude. This year will be its 51th year. The ceremony is simple. A group of people get together by Zoom and simply share what they are grateful for in their lives. Past participants have felt the event is meaningful for them given that the day is Thanksgiving. Jim believes The Ceremony of Gratitude connects us to being thankful on the special day.
All members and guests are welcome to join in. This will be done over ZOOM on Thursday, November 27 at 10:00 a.m., so it doesn’t interfere with the day or watching all the football games. A ZOOM link will be emailed out shortly before Thanksgiving. Contact Jim Pockross mpockross@comcast.net if you would like to participate.
President Ken Drummet opened the meeting at 12:15pm and welcomed everyone. Moha Bouacha shared a few inspirational quotes for the day. A Rotarian, John Baier from the former North Chicago club, joined us as a guest.
Barb Tubekis shared upcoming volunteer events, join in and invite friends to experience Rotary service:
“Share Your Bounty” grocery donations to Good News Partners is next Thursday, November 20th during our meeting, and we need monetary donations to purchase the groceries. Patti, Barb, Bob, and Moha volunteered to purchase groceries.
Tuesday, December 2nd 6:00pm is lunch packing for Connections for the Homeless, and December is our club’s responsibility. We need volunteers to sign up for purchasing food, assembly of lunches and delivery of the lunches on Wednesday, December 3rd. Rotary: Lunch-Packing for Homeless
Also, you can bring your clear plastic food containers to our club meetings that we will give to Glencoe Community Garden for their fresh vegetable distribution.
Ken shared a couple of announcements:
The club Nominating Committee has met to assemble the officer slate.
Rotary International’s Annual Conference will be in Chicago in 2030, and a current project is to install peace poles. Think about where our club could sponsor a peace pole.
Ken invited Barb and Rich Lalley to go “Behind the Badge” and share a little of their respective life stories.
Early in her life, Barb went from Chicago to St. Louis and back to Winnetka. She loved her experiences at New Trier High School where she engaged in service, learned leadership, and was part of the water ballet team. At Depauw she continued her life of service. During her study abroad in Greece, their excursion to Egypt included a chance encounter with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, at the Cairo Hilton. She is proud to be a member of Rotary, and the club has been a big part of her life.
Rich believes that good things come from life’s challenges. Rich’s life journey has taken him across the country from the Naval Air Base at Norfolk, VA to Buffalo, NY, Edgewood Borough in Pittsburgh and Birmingham, PA, Arizona, Lansing (MSU), MI, Chicago, St. Louis, MO, Milwaukee, WI, and now Mundelein. Wow! Rich connected to our club when his banker brought him to lunch, and Rotary fit his commitment to service. He has worked with Operation Warm for 16 years.
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.
Continuing our club's long standing Thanksgiving tradition, we will once again partner with the Volunteer Center to provide post-holiday groceries for families in transitional housing who are served by Good News Partners in Chicago's North of Howard neighborhood. We will purchase groceries in bulk at Costco before our meeting on Nov 20, so please donate by November 16.
Your gifts provide post-holiday groceries to these families in need. Donate by credit card or bank transfer here, or mail a check made payable to WNRCF to Rotary Club of Winnetka Northfield, 620 Lincoln Ave, Winnetka, IL 60093.
We hope to provide over 100 bags of groceries and have a fundraising goal of $2,500.
Donate here, or bring a check or credit card to a lunch meeting.
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.
