The meeting was called to order on time by President Chuck Norton and there were 20 members present, plus our guest speaker.
ANNIVERSARIES: Felicia O’Malley was celebrating her birthday and Rick Boerjesson has been in Rotary for 3 years.
ANNOUNCEMENTS: Rich again reminded members of our goal to raise $1000 as part of the Warm Soles project by Rotary District 6440 which is trying to provide new shoes to 150 children in North Chicago and Waukegan. John Thomas said he would give $10 if someone could show him how to pay his Cook County taxes online without suffering major frustration problems! Bob Baker filled in on Dig N Grin.
GUEST SPEAKER: VITALIY BEZRODNOV: Vitaliy gave a very energetic presentation about his long experience as a professional musician, an organizer of International youth exchange programs, an entertainer for Rotary events and as a Rotary member himself. He founded the Rotary Children’s Fund in 2003 which has been involved with over 500 students world wide, many of them joining Interact, Rotaract and Rotary. He has made presentations similar to the one given to us to over 500 Rotary Clubs.
He was born in Russia. He was professionally trained to play the accordion and as a young man joined a trio of musicians called the Moscow Nights Trio. After performing in many of the countries that were part of Russia at that time, his trio was booked to come to the United States to play at various colleges and other events that mostly involved cultural exchanges. Among some of the venues were Disney World and Dollywood (they actually performed with Dolly Parton).
In 1995 his trio was asked to perform at a Denver Rotary meeting and he said it changed his life. That Rotary Club was working on and actually devised a program to help supply medical help to people who lived in the countries that were pulling out of Russia at that time. Vitaliy then moved to Cleveland which had a very multicultural population with lots of festivals celebrating Eastern European life style. He organized and managed many youth exchange programs for kids 15-21 years old since it was very difficult for these kids to arrange exchange programs with other countries on their own. That was when he formed the Rotary Children’s Fund.
He arranged for many groups of youth from Eastern Europe (e.g. Armenia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia) to come to the U.S. to talk about their home countries and to see what life is like in the U.S. and to share their life experiences with Americans. Most of these youth thought that all of the U.S. would be like they saw in the Hollywood movies—but they found out differently. Thousands of U.S. citizens attended the concerts put on by these young musicians and entertainers (usually in groups of 15 who could travel together comfortably with all their equipment in a large van and a trailer). In addition to educational venues, they performed and interacted at churches, festivals and senior centers throughout the U.S. Wherever they toured they would contact the local Rotary Club that usually supported their programs financially and by their attendance. Although he recently discontinued the programs due to the pandemic, Vitaliy said that he intends to restart them this coming August and that he hopes to bring one of the exchange programs to our area. He now lives and operates out of North Carolina where he is a member of a local Rotary Club.