Lucky Sandhu brought the meeting to order by welcoming the crowd and reminding everyone that he is the President of Rotary. Steve Wilcox quoted Walt Disney for the inspiration of the day “Dreams come true if you have the courage to pursue them”.  Steve had another great quote but this scribe was too slow on the draw to record it for our members and subscribers. Steve has been a community member since 1998, a club member since 2000 and is married to a wonderful woman, Sharon who let’s Steve share their three children one of which is in film (age 21), another who is an artist (age 14) and the third whose life is baseball (age 12).  Go Dodgers! (This is an editorial comment not intended to inflame the passions of Giant fans)

 

Lucky clearly had too much coffee this morning as evidenced by his vocal enthusiasm for our Club and its members who he described as “people of action”.  He asked Gary Sloan to announce that the Board approved moving the date of the auction to the first week of November to enhance our marketing efforts and enable greater focus of the SRVEF staff on our fund raiser.  The Board also committed that all funds raised by this event will benefit the San Ramon Valley School District.   Colette Lay was asked to allay any concerns that our Interact was involved in the controversial protest at Cal High.  She strongly urged Rotarians to get all the facts surrounding this controversy before making judgments that may inadvertently and negatively affect our relationship with our Interact kids.  Colette also requested members to be respectful of the Principal who is scheduled to speak at the club and try to direct our energy in helping to enhance Interact.

 

Lucky shared that he had attended the State of the City on Wednesday where our Mayor, Bill Clarkson was proudly associated with Rotary.  Glenn Webber reminded everyone that he was Bill’s sponsor and that even blind squirrels occasionally find nuts.  (Is that a good thing or a bad thing?).  One good thing that also happened on Wednesday night was a good gathering of members at Worth Ranch for Members Night out.  There was great fellowship, food and drinks.  Lucky seemed surprised by the good turnout (over 20 people) until he realized that there was a bar at the restaurant which was undoubtedly a big draw.  He congratulated and thanked Patti Hennigan for organizing the event.

 

Lucky recognized all past Presidents $35 in honor of President’s Day and the number of years our club has existed while sharing his respect for these hard working men and women of our Club.

 

John Milich, President Elect, announced that he had gone to “pre PETS” (President Elect Training) and realized that incoming Presidents were even more lost and disorganized than he was.  He also shared a really nice story about how he had business in Truckee earlier in the week and upon reaching his destination he noticed a Rotary Paul Harris award on the wall and made fast friends with the owner due to their common association.  Happens thousands of times a year, I’m sure. 

 

District Conference on May 4-6 for those who want to know about Rotary and your potential role in our organization or if you simply want to support our new President.  Alternatively, you may want to go for golf, gambling and drinking.

 

Naim shared his birthday with family and friends.

Stacey was whist off to Las Vegas to celebrate her lucky 13^th Anniversary.  She revealed her bad taste in music by announcing that she attended a Bon Jovi “semi-private” benefit concert to honor those lost in the Las Vegas shooting.

 

Priya, hearing that Stacey violated the Las Vegas code of what goes on in Vegas stays in Vegas, shared that she just returned from New Orleans but elected to not give any details other than a sly smile indicating she got into some kind of fun.

 

Nina asked for support from her fellow Rotarians to go to the Alamo Safeway where her adorable daughter, Lila Rose, would be selling Girl Scout cookies.

 

 

Jean Herschade is formerly from Ohio, a long time Rotarian with Healdsburg Club and whose 97 year old dad is a Rotarian.  She is a retired software engineer who upon her retirement got involved in Latin America and particularly the isolated community of Zacualpa in Guatemala.  Her passion for educating young women as a means to providing an opportunity for a better life was realized in her work to insure an education to kids in this rural community who typically do not finish the 3rd grade. 

 

Following a 36 year civil war over land reform and genocide, this country is beginning to repair itself with the help of outside organizations that provide scholarships to students to attend school through the 6^th Grade.  She shared that there were now 64 students of which 73% were young women.

 

The Healdsburg Interact Club donate dictionaries for distribution.  Jean also located shoes that are designed to grow with the child (cool concept and design).  Her organization provides close to $40,000 in scholarships and linked with Project Care, a distributor of used medical equipment.  After an intense evaluation by Project Care, Jean received $500,000 for equipment that needed to be transported for $33,000 through funds she raised.

 

Midwives were also given a grant of $20,000 to promote a program called “Helping Babies Breathe” and later “trained the trainer” to ensure sustainability of the program.

 

Other activities included building a library with intranet connectivity, improve the water system and provide solar lighting.  Funsepa is partnering to provide improved technology in selected schools ($6500 per school).  Jean ingeniously learned that Chiquita Bananas sent food in container to the U.S. and obtained approval to use the empty containers returning to Guatemala to fill with computers which were converted for Spanish speaking populations and connected to a intranet with textbooks and Wikipedia access.  (Brilliant).

 

Many questions followed ranging from the effects on the indigenous Indian population to the political stability of the country and the level of Rotary cooperation. 

 

The club thanks Jean for her informative and inspirational presentation by Lucky who by this time had calmed down from his earlier coffee high.

 

Lucky closed the meeting by thanking Dennis Harvey for his work in membership.

 

Judy won a beautiful box containing two bottles of wine in the raffle and Edguardo pulled blue marble for $10 allowing the pot to grow to over $200. 

 

Next week’s program is “Caring Hands” with new member Anan Goban as our greeter.

 

Respectfully submitted by,

 

Gary Sloan, Scribe