I am happy to report that the District’s 75 clubs are starting to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. What better organization would you want to have at your back? Rotary has survived and grown through two World Wars, the last pandemic of the Spanish Flu, and is now in the process of ridding the world of Polio.
I am happy to report that most of our Rotary clubs, the District, Zone and Rotary International have recovered from the initial shock of this crisis and are now moving forward to reach out and assist its members and their local communities worldwide. The response has been fantastic.
Cornwall Salvation Army: Our hearts are exploding with gratitude - Thank you to the Rotary Club of Cornwall for donating over $1000 in food to our Food Bank.
The club took our wish list and went out shopping and purchased the most needed products for our clients.
WOW. The Rotary Club of Cornwall Sunrise reached out to us not long ago, asking if we needed help.
It didn't take them long to show up with $2,000 worth of non-perishable food. We are so grateful! The Agape Centre, Cornwall.
Members of the Passport Club are making masks.
Arnprior
During the current COVID-19 crisis, the need to help struggling families is now. The Rotary Club of Arnprior met with Ontario Works on Friday, to hand over $10,500 in food, gas and supply gift cards to aid Renfrew County Families. This ongoing Disaster Aid adds to the $3,050 funds donated by Rotary Clubs to help Renfrew County flood victims last fall.
The obtaining of these funds was spearheaded by Gerhard Peters of the Arnprior Rotary Club and the money comes from all District 7040 Rotary Clubs including the Ottawa Valley Rotary Clubs. Contributing District Clubs come from Eastern Ontario, Western Quebec and Northern New York State.
The total $10,500 of $50 Gift Cards included:
$2,500 from Canadian Tire - including Gas,
$ 750 from ESSO Gas,
$1,000 from Home Hardware,
$5,500 from President’s Choice for groceries and medications (Shopper’s Drug Mart)
$ 750 from Ultramar Gas
These cards will be delivered to Andrea Patrick, Ontario Works Manager - Social Service Department, to disburse throughout Renfrew county to selected qualifying clients in need of this aid.
Renfrew
Renfrew Rotarians are helping out in a very simple way with our local grocery store. We are doing deliveries of groceries to those who are unable to get out.
Metro grocery store has been our supplier for our Bacon on a Bun Booth at our Renfrew Fair for years. He supplies everything for cost. This is our chance to give back to both the community and to the store owner for helping us out with our largest fundraiser.
We don’t need to collect any money or have anything to do with the customer, we just drop it on their porch because they’ve paid their credit card already. The grocery store owner is willing to pay for gas and give something for their efforts. The requests for deliveries keeps growing.
Posted by Bonnie Black, District Rotary Foundation Chair
All clubs received a short survey from our District Stewardship Committee on March 29th and responded by Wednesday the 1st of April regarding what each club had already done or planned to do about the pandemic.
A week later, after the 61 responses were received and analyzed, our Grants Committee Chair, PDG Bette Miller sent to every club the The Rotary Foundation District 7040 District Simplified Grants COVID-19 Club Application Form.
Criteria: This is a one-time District initiative with ALL clubs in D7040 eligible to apply (no qualification necessary) with only one application per club. Applications must be received no later than April 20, 2020.
The Rotary Support Center does not have phone or contribution processing capabilities at this time. They are only available to answer inquiries via email. Their email address is rotarysupportcenter@rotary.org. Members should not email contributions to this email address.
The Governor of Illinois has issued a shelter-in-place order. This means that no staff will be allowed into One Rotary Center. Any contributions sent to One Rotary Center will not be processed for some time.Additionally, our capability for accepting faxed contributions has also been placed on hold indefinitely. We highly encourage members who would like to contribute to do so online at myrotary.org/donate. Club officers do have the option to donate on behalf of their club members once they sign in. Look in Files on the district COVID-19 page.
Again, the best place to make a contribution is online at myrotary.org/donate.
The full article can be found on the District COVID-19 page (link above).
After careful consideration, we have decided to go forward with RYLA 2020! With so many Rotary events being postponed or cancelled, we wanted to be able to deliver some good news.
RYLA 2020 will happen from May 28 (Thursday) to May 31 (Sunday). Each day will be slightly shortened from those of past years but spread out and so the need to add a fourth day. Rest assured that no students will be travelling to Kingston – instead, we will be meeting online using Zoom, virtual icebreakers, Google Classroom and more. The RYLA team has been working diligently to adapt our programme to the new environment and we are confident that the student delegates will have fun, be engaged, learn lots about leadership and make new friends. Our goals for the experience remain the same.
Our District Foundation Committee is coming to you! Although we meet quarterly along with the District International Service Committee, we usually are missing representation from about 40 of our 66 clubs.
So…our Foundation Team will come to you on the following Saturday mornings at 10 am for a 30-minute ASK YOUR QUESTIONS gathering via Zoom:
April 18 – Endowment Fund (Rotary’s Future)
May 30 – Polio (Rotary’s Major Initiative)
Drop in on one or all sessions! If you’re interested, just email me at bonblack@yahoo.com and I will send you the link. Feel free to ask other club members who might have an interest in hearing more about Our Foundation doing good in the world - see you soon!
President Elect Caroline DeWitt of the Rotary Club of West Ottawa reading and showing pictures to the children of the All in One Child Development Centre.
From left to right: Ms. Charmaine Anderson – Principal of All in One Child Development Centre, President Elect Caroline DeWitt – Rotary Club of West Ottawa, President Anthony John-Baptiste – Rotary Club of Central Port of Spain, Ms. Susan Philip – Service Projects Chairperson and Mr. Peter Aleong – Chairman of the Board, All in One Child Development Centre.
President Elect Caroline DeWitt of the Rotary Club of West Ottawa and President Anthony John-Baptiste of the Rotary Club of Central Port of Spain along with Past President Nicole Matouk and Service Projects Chairperson, Susan Philip, interacting with the children.
President Elect Caroline DeWitt second from right presenting school supplies and chocolates to the principal Ms. Charmaine Anderson and the teachers of the All in One Child Development Centre.
This Article is from the Rotary Zone 8 newsletter Rotary On The Move. I encourage you to read the whole article.
Zoom looks a bit different, depending on your device. It works on PCs, laptops, tablets and smart phones. First step is to download the application appropriate for your device from Zoom.US.
Watch this video first.
Joining a Zoom Call for the First Time; Fun and Easy Online Connection.
This is an 8 min video and shows how it looks on a Windows PC. Similar for Mac, except Zoom is in the Apple store. For IOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android (tablets and phones) Zoom is in their stores.
Posted by Michele Berg, Deputy General Secretary Rotary International
Several months ago, we announced that Rotary Shop would close in April 2020. As members increasingly turn to Rotary’s electronic channels for information, we’ve seen a substantial decrease in use of Rotary Shop and more interest in downloadable files.
Digital versions of our most popular publications will be available on Rotary websites, including My Rotary and Rotary’s Learning Center. Some publications will also be offered as print-ready files that you can send to a local printer, if you’d like to.
