Chair: Courtney Fisher

Toast to the Queen, Canada & Rotary: Vice President, Courtney

Anthem: (Awaits return to our choir stalls in the future)

Attending: 15 members

 

 

 

 

Program: Directors’ reports for first quarter of 2021/2022

 

Danny was out of town for today’s meeting so Vice President Courtney presided over the meeting where the three directors and the treasurer reported on their activities since the beginning of this Rotary year  2021/2022.

 

Club Service Group Director Rocco Colangelo provided an outline of their activities.

 

Rocco introduced himself and indicated that his group meets monthly and organizes the club duties such as arranging meetings, social events which take place the third Wednesday evening each month, the POD system which rotates the meeting duties over the three membership groups including Greeter, Sergeant at Arms, the introduction of the speaker and the thanker for the speaker. Frank  Allison is also tasked with monitoring any response for the club to members or their families who are reported sick or suffering from bereavement. The group also sets the annual club dues which cover our costs and pay into the District activities. Rocco welcomes advertising as a fund raiser to offset the cost of the Club’s website. Club meetings have all been by ZOOM except the last two social meetings which were quite successful but we are continuing to look for a restaurant in our area of Scarborough which could take us after the COVID restrictions are lifted. A committee has continued to research possibilities but few have arisen.

An extended discussion took place when Gerd commented on the importance  for the club to obtain a meeting location-restaurant in Scarborough. A number of suggestions were offered such as church facilities where a local group might cater and the possibility of using the Agincourt Community Centre (4139 Sheppard E.)  which has been rebuilt after a fire and it has rooms where the Lion’s Club have held meetings.

 

 

 

International Services Director Barry Smith reviewed the work of his committee.

The portion of the club's budget relating to International Service, being $16,539 is about

40% of the total budget for local and international community services. Out of this amount, we

have traditionally supported several well vetted programs for the past several years. This year,

these include: $1,000 to Operation Eyesight to prevent or cure blindness in the third world,

$1,500 to Sleeping Children Around the World to provide bed kits to homeless children in the

third world, $1,000 to Adopt A Village in Laos to bring clean drinking water to remote villages,

$1,500 to the ROOTA project to alleviate poverty and bring education to those in the slums of

Cairo, and $1,400 to Shelter Box to have a box of essentials ready to be shipped to various

disaster relief areas throughout the world.

We are in touch with these organizations and are requesting reporting from them, despite the fact

that they have all spoken to our club in the past to explain their operations. Steve Rutledge, who

is in charge of Adopt A Village, will be speaking to the club next week to provide an update. We

have received a report from ROOTA that they were short listed for the World Literacy Awards

2021 out of 450 participants world wide.

 

Shelter Box sent us a video report on how our donations are helping with the disaster relief in Haiti. We are expecting photos, videos and other reports from Trinidad with respect to our completed project that supplied 7 - 10 litre oxygen concentrators to the Palliative Care program in Trinidad and Tobago. We are continuing to ensure that our funds are being well used for the purposes intended.

 

In addition to these regular programs that we support, in this year's club budget, we have

allocated $5,000 to disaster relief and $5,000 to new projects. With respect to disaster relief, and in addition to the Shelter Box that was funded by our club, we allocated $1,500 towards disaster relief in Haiti through Global Medic. As you may recall, we also asked for contributions from members towards the disaster in Haiti. Our members answered the call, allowing us to send an additional $5,400 for Haitian relief. There is still $3,500 therefore remaining in our budget for disasters that may arise during the balance of the Rotary year.

With respect to new projects, we are in talks with the Rotary Club of Kitante in Uganda with

respect to a possible partnership to support the Menstrual Purse Program. This program would

supply reusable pads to the girls in the slums of Kampala as well as education and possible

manufacture of these pads by the girls themselves. We will only be moving forward with this

project if the Rotary Club of Kitante  commits to oversee that our funds are properly applied to

this project. Barry anticipated that a District grant could be obtained for the MPP project once the local partner is committed.

 

We will be considering further projects to support, including the expansion of the ROOTA project into recycling of glass in what is termed “garbage city” in Cairo.

 

With my dedicated committee of Dhanni Ramdeen, Gerd Wengler, David Seemungal, Tony

Baker, Mike Mushet, Trudy Tumusime, Emanuel Nwankwo and Mandy Nwobu, I’m sure that we

will ensure that this club’s International Service work will be top notch! This concludes my

report on behalf of a very active and dedicated International Service Committee.

 

Community Services Group identifies and supports Service Groups, Charitable Agencies, Food Banks, participation in community events such as Festivals and Park clean-ups in Scarborough as well as organize Warm Hands Project and award Paul Harris Scholarships. The COVID pandemic and loss of auction fund raising capability have had an adverse effect on our activity but we have still managed to have an active program. 

We are supporting the following programs that have been approved by the Board and cheques will soon be sent out.

East Scarborough Storefront, Scarborough Philharmonic, Habitat for Humanity, Rising Sun Food Drive, Agincourt Community Services, Warm Hands, Hope Air, Muslim Children’s Aid and Support Services, Educational Bank Initiative (Scarborough), Paul Harris Scholarships, and Scarborough Women’s Centre. Asialicious Carnival, and Park Clean-up with the volunteers and the encouragement of Cynthia Lai our member on Toronto City Council,

We had a booth at the Asianlicious Carnival (Woodside Square Mall) on Sept 10,11 & 12^th. Saifoo was in charge and several members of the Community Services Group as well as President Danny helped out. We had several knick knacks, Rotary pamphlets and candy to give away. We also had a trivia contest prepared by Avrum which was won by Ruth Cassidy. 

The park clean-up was held on Saturday Sept 18^th at Season’s Park, Morningside Heights organized by Cynthia and her staff. Saifoo and Peter co-ordinated the event. We had an excellent turnout of Rotarians and their spouses.

We also have a list of other worthy charities we wish to support as funds become available. These include Shine through the Rain federation, Canadian Centre for Refugees, Seed of Hope Foundation, Dr. Roz Healing Place, Transcare Community Service, Kerry’s Place Autism Service, and the Canadian Red Cross.

Before he closed his remarks, Arthur said that he had just received an email from Suresh that outlines an idea for a possible fund raiser. Suresh would go into this when he puts the details together for submission to the board. Additionally, Saifoo will look into purchasing give-away pens in large numbers with our Club’s name and website embossed, (No location or phone number is being considered at this time),

Arthur closed off by saying how much he enjoys this work which is in many respects more rewarding than doing research inside a lab.

 

 

Treasurer Dhanni Ramdeen provided an overview of the Club’s finances as at Sept. 30^th,

She explained her role as the treasurer of the club which she has filled since 2017. That includes preparing the accounts and financial statements for each month end, the tax returns for the donations which are received by the club’s  Foundation and preparing the Foundation report for an annual audit and submission to the CRA.

The club currently has 30 members who were recently sent their annual dues invoices.All but 8 have been paid and that is a much faster response than we have had in the past.

The first quarter of the  year is not normally very busy as the club is busy planning projects which then become disbursements later in the second and third quarters. Because of COVID this year there will be no fundraiser which we normally plan for December. But as occurred during the first year of our lock down we have been promised funding from Gerd Wengler that he is confident that his sources will  be able to raise $80,000 for our causes. Dhanni expressed a special thanks on behalf of all the club members for his generosity and confidence in the work that we do as Rotarians.

She went on to report that so far this year we have received $13,000 from members and friends of Rotary which included Champ Engineering, individuals who have specified their donations for the Scarborough  Womens’ Shelter, Habitat for Humanity, Haiti Earthquake relief and the District Foundation Walk. 

Dhanni pointed out that only $400 has been pledged so far for the Foundation Walk by the end of September but another $1,200 has been received from Barry but normally that Walk generates $3,000 to $4,000 for the Foundation.  She urged all members to participate and can transfer by e-transfer to her at dramdeen88@gmail./com to make deposits to the Foundation account. (Please don’t use the donation button on the club’s website as that costs the transaction charge of almost $10 for each occasion).

We have a combined bank balance (Foundation & Club funding) at September 30^th of $78,396, a combined investment balance of $157,674 which is invested in cashable CD’s with maturities of 30 days. Interest is earning partly at 0.5% and 0.54%.

 

Several members asked whether they had paid for the Foundation Walk. Dhanni will be pleased to oblige with a phone call and keep the donations coming.

Dhanni is also finalizing the Foundation report which, although due in December, she wants to have submitted for audit by the end of this month and submitted to the CRA by November 30th

Arthur expressed a warm thank you to Dhanni for all the hard work she puts in for keeping our accounts in order.

 

Courtney made a special comment at this point on Gerd’s donation announcement. These are challenging times. Thank you, thank you thank you!!

You have heard today about all the wonderful work being done by the Community Services and International groups through this club. But these require money and we are in difficult times for our ability to raise funds. Gerd, your generosity will allow us to keep helping these organizations that we have supported in the past with new additions this year. 

 

Gerd responded by saying how giving to Rotary you know that those funds are given to the recipients

without any shrinkage from administration. He says he has no problem telling his contacts about the good work that Rotary does locally and internationally with zero administrative costs unlike others like the Red Cross which can be up to 50%.

 

 

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ulb5f861zd4jdfq/Rotary%20meeting%20Oct%206.MP3?dl=0