Welcome to December! Rotary's Disease Prevention and Treatment Month! December is a time to celebrate the holidays and wrap up the calendar year. It is also the time to make sure next year's leaders are training and planning, as well as helping our current leader's execute. We will be hearing more about the training opportunities shortly.
The big event is the District Holiday Party on December 16, 2018 at Arturo's in Westborough starting at 5:30 pm. We want all of you there to join us in celebrating the holidays! <CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION>
There are still openings for travel with our District Service Project installing stoves around Panajachel, Guatemala. <CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION>
I wish everyone a happy holiday, and a safe, healthy and happy new year! I look forward to seeing all of you at our Holiday Party!
ROLL TO THE POLLS! On Election Day (Tuesday, November 6th), the Rotary Club of Westborough helped voters access the polls at Westborough High School. Rotarians, wearing brightly colored Rotary Club vests, helped with wheelchairs, golf carts and umbrellas from their cars to the High School entrance and to the gymnasium where the polls were located. Upon exiting the polls voters were helped to return to their cars. The finishing touch…a pop-up tent to keep voters dry, donuts and free coffee and welcome smiles! This is the second time the club has hosted this event. It’s a simple one, provides necessary service and offers great visibility. The Club is already in the planning stages for Roll to the Poll 2020!
JOIN US INSTALLING STOVES PROJECT IN PANAJACHEL, GUATEMALA
MARCH 23-30, 2019
Please join Rotarians from Rotary District 7910 with our hands-on District Sponsored Global Grant Project installing stoves in the rural villages around Panajachel, Guatemala. This International Service project is done in collaboration with several Guatemala Rotary Clubs.
Are you a Rotarian interested in installing stoves in homes where currently an open fire in the center of the house is used for cooking. Cooking on an open fire in an unventilated area increases respiratory diseases and burn injuries, particularly with mothers and children. It also results in rapid deforestation as open fires are inefficient. These stoves will improve the ventilation in homes thereby decreasing the carbon monoxide, it will reduce injuries, and will decrease wood consumption by at least 50%.
Please join us in congratulating Susan Peghiny as the Nominating Committee's selection for the 2021-2022 District Governor for Rotary District 7910! Susan is a past President of the Rotary Club of Newton and is currently serving as the District Secretary and an Assistant Governor. The Nominating Committee interviewed candidates and selected Susan as the best qualified of all the candidates in the pool this year to lead our district!. If confirmed, Susan will assume the role of District Governor Nominee Designate (DGND).
Susan lives in Newton with her husband Ron Faccenda (who is PE of the Newton Club) and her father, Jim. All three of them work in the family clock and watch repair business located in their home. Sue has had a wide variety of jobs and experiences, but it wasn’t until she joined Rotary that she finally figured out what she wanted to be when she grew up: a Rotarian.
[The following story has been adapted from an Article on the Framingham Rotary Club appearing in the Ashland Local Town Pages -Ed.]
The Framingham Rotary Club is making life a little safer for an elderly Ashland family. If the weather cooperates, the family’s crumbling front steps will soon be repaired, thanks to an award from the Rotary’s Random Act of Kindness program.
Posted by Matthew Johnsen, Ph.D., Rotary Peace Fellow
"Don’t be content in your life just to do no wrong, be prepared every day to try and do some good"
Three years ago, I traveled around the world. I was powerfully affected by what I experienced. As a sociologist, I knew about global connectionsand the ways different parts of the world depend and interact with one another. What I experienced most deeply on this journey, however, were personalconnections. The storiesof students, tour guides, taxi drivers, hosts, friends, random people met in restaurants, border agents, even people I met on the street flooded my consciousness during the trip. These narratives brought the world together for me, one story at a time.
I experienced tremendous hospitality, a warm welcome, openness and friendliness on a journey that took me through 19 countries across three continents. I learned that the life experiences that join us together are much greater than the differences between us. I learned to value each interaction as an opportunity to contribute something positive. I also met people who were making a difference in the world: some small and some large. My friend Somit in Varanasi shared a vision based on his own life: expelled from school because his parents could not pay school fees, he now provides schooling to as many children as he can at no cost. He has organized many entrepreneurial efforts (a small guest house, a restaurant, yoga education, travel services and more) as social enterprises— directing the profits from each to teach young children in schools he organizes. His vision of peace is making the world better.
Adapted from an article by Alyce Henson, Rotary International staff photographer
Using photography to tell a story can feel complex and challenging, but it doesn’t have to. By following a few guidelines, having a focused mindset, and applying a bit of confidence, you can take great pictures. Below are some photo tips based on recent images the author took in Nassau and Seattle, as well as some from our own district. Try these tricks, and you might be surprised what you can capture.
If you see a great moment happening naturally don’t be afraid to ask people to continue doing the action that caught your eye in the first place. In this case, the photographer saw these two Rotarians passing a seed pod to one another. She asked them to pass it back and forth a few times and to look at each other. It only took an extra minute or two to get a successful image.
We recently received an email from Camilla Vogt, the recipient of our District’s endowed Global Grant Morley scholarship. This scholarship provides funding for a year of foreign study pertaining to one or more of Rotary's Six Areas of Focus. Camilla, shown here writes "I hope your fall is going well! I can hardly believe it is almost November. My first month here has flown by. We are halfway through the academic term, and school is taking up a tremendous amount of time. I have already written three papers and have an economics test every week. I am trying my hand at rowing, which means early (and chilly!) mornings, and organizing a student speaker series at my department. Each day is rich and full, and I am loving it here so far!"
The Framingham Rotary Club of held its Annual Pancake Breakfast on November 3—it was the seventh in the series— at Keefe Tech High School’s East Room, which is the showpiece and training center of the school’s culinary and hospitality department. Some 300 guests, individuals and families from the City and adjacent towns enjoyed pancakes with genuine maple syrup, hash browns, sausages, juice, coffee, tea, and milk. All of the proceeds will support scholarships to selected high school seniors in Framingham, Ashland, Holliston and Hopkinton.
The Rotary Club of Langhorne, Pennsylvania meets for lunch at a restaurant in a historic mansion, but at times attendance was at risk of falling below the minimum 20 meals required by the venue. “We were losing members because they couldn’t make meetings,” recalls Club Membership Chair at the time, Bill Kaufmann.
Board discussions yielded ideas but no firm solutions. Then one member started sending his office manager to meetings in his place. “That was my ‘aha’ moment,” says Kaufmann, now Club President. The Club then decided to let members designate a business associate or family member to attend meetings and participate in projects in their stead – or alongside them.
The Club now recognizes the stand-ins, named “Clones”, who must have a family or business relationship with the primary member and pay $25 in annual dues to the club to cover the cost of name tags and
PDG Dick Manelis has lead international service projects from District 7910 for almost 20 years. He meets a lot of interesting people helping him out along the way. Here is Dick's message about one of those people:
INTRODUCING: Carlos Centeno. I met Carlos in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. He was an active member of the local Rotaract Club and had volunteered to work with us on our humanitarian project in Copán Ruinas for 3 days. We would cover his expenses. He not only worked with us for three days but lived with a friend, worked the full week and refused to accept any compensation.
We are pleased to announce the opportunity to participate in the organization of the new District 7910 Rotary Passport Club. A passport club is technically a club in Rotary District 7910, but its members attend meetings of other clubs, help in their service projects and fundraisers, and do all the things club based Rotarians do, except on their own schedule. Passport Clubs are a perfect solution for people who wish to be Rotarians but do not have the flexible schedule to permit attendance at regular meetings. While the focus of membership recruitment for the club is on new members, the Passport Club is also suitable for Rotarians who would otherwise leave a club due to time commitments. Read on for more detail about how a passport club works.
Has your club recently hosted a service project that you want to showcase to be the inspiration to other clubs? Are you planning something in the near future that you would like to share with your fellow District 7910 Rotarians?
Our District 7910 eBulletin, Website, Facebook and Instagram depend on the content provided by our clubs, so please submit your stories and we will publish them on the district website, in the next eBulletin, and on social media. Stories that showcase your club's service projects should be submitted in plain text along with a photo. If you are promoting an event, please send the flyer along with a sentence with the details of the event. Please send your stories to ssager@sagerlegal.com with the words Rotary Story in the subject line.
Using photography to tell a story can feel complex and challenging, but it doesn’t have to. By following a few guidelines, having a focused mindset, and applying a bit of confidence, you can take great pictures. Below are some photo tips based on recent images the author took in Nassau and Seattle, as well as some from our own district. Try these tricks, and you might be surprised what you can capture.
We recently received an email from Camilla Vogt, the recipient of our District’s endowed Global Grant Morley scholarship. This scholarship provides funding for a year of foreign study pertaining to one or more of Rotary's Six Areas of Focus. Camilla, shown here writes "I hope your fall is going well! I can hardly believe it is almost November. My first month here has flown by. We are halfway through the academic term, and school is taking up a tremendous amount of time. I have already written three papers and have an economics test every week. I am trying my hand at rowing, which means early (and chilly!) mornings, and organizing a student speaker series at my department. Each day is rich and full, and I am loving it here so far!"
