Attendance: 14 members plus the guest speaker
Chair: President Mike
Anthem: Gord Brown
Grace: Peter Masson
Announcements:
- Basil clarified his previous announcements regarding the International Convention and Home Hospitality at the Guild Inn. The total cost of hosting Home Hospitality at the Guild is $20,000. Our club’s contribution is $5,000; however, the balance of the Scarborough Rotary clubs will be contributing their pro rata share based upon their membership numbers in relation to one another. Also, our club members do not have to register for the convention in order to attend Home Hospitality, because we are hosting it.
- Basil also updated us on the eBay Rotary Auction to the effect that the customer who ordered the furnace had agreed to arrange for installation after all, which is good news for our club.
- The Memorial Service for Jack Wylie was very well attended with about 14 attendees being from our club. Lynn has been invited to visit our club and has agreed to do so if she can arrange transportation.
The Marbelous Draw was conducted by Jim Boyko and was won, and lost, by the Mushet/Wengler syndicate, since Gerd was unable to find the mutant marble.
Sgt-at-Arms David Seemungal
- First, he fined all those who was not wearing their Rotary pins.
- Barry tossed in an extra $8 for happy and sad bucks. His second granddaughter is now almost 5 months old, but when she was a month old Barry’s son re-located to Calgary, so he has not seen little Isabelle for 4 months; however, Barry and Glennys are hoping to be able to visit her in the March Break.
- Our guest speaker, a visiting Rotarian, paid up for not wearing his Rotary pin.
- Gerd paid happy bucks for the opportunity to tell a couple of dog stories. Firstly, he was charged for 4 passengers when he landed at Edmonton airport, even though he only had Dorothy and his dog as passengers. Apparently, if you do not list the number of passengers, you are charged for the number of seats. Gerd softened their hearts with some cute pics of his dog as a puppy, and the airport authorities waived the extra charges. Gerd also told a story about his dog being unable to get Dorothy’s attention until he managed to go to her coat, retrieve her glove from the pocket, and bring it to her. This got her attention, which was fortunate because the dog was trying to tell her that he had to go outside to do his business.
Program:
Gerd introduced our guest speaker, Errol Paulicpulle, who has been with the Toronto Rotary Club since 2008 and, in addition to supporting other charitable projects, spearheaded a project to assist two orphanages, one for boys and one for girls, in Sri Lanka. These orphanages were terribly neglected following the tsunami disaster and 26 years of civil war.
Errol was born in Sri Lanka and emigrated to Canada in the 70's. It was therefore natural for him to try to give back to the most powerless members of Sri Lankan society... the orphans. Many of these orphaned children were the result of their parents being killed in the war or tsunami, and some were the result of the mass rapes that took place during the war.
The Shakthi Girls Home houses 37 girls and the Hari Boys Home houses 67 boys. In addition to supplying food, clothes and school supplies when Errol visits these orphanages, he is also involved in organizing much-needed renovations. Oversight of these renovations is not just provided by Errol, who personally negotiates the renovation contracts, but is assisted by the Colombo Rotary Club, a local Rotary Club in the area of the orphanages. The renovation contracts are paid in progress payments, and members of the Colombo club go to the site to confirm the progress of the renovations before each stage of the renovations is paid.
Since the orphanages are in the Tamil area of the country, all of the children are from the Hindu community.
This year, Errol plans to raise funds to pay for renovations for the girls’ orphanage. The cost of renovating the showers, bathroom, and kitchen will be about $10,000. Next year, the entire third floor will have to be renovated at a cost of $15-20,000.
Errol then fielded lots of questions as the membership wanted to better understand the needs involved.
Gerd raised the issue of a Globe & Mail article that took the position that orphanage donations simply continued to make the orphans dependent on handouts. Errol explained that first, you have to look after the basic needs of the orphans. There are projects that have been attempted by other organizations with other orphanages in an effort to assist the orphans to become self-sufficient, but they require constant funding. Errol used as an example a project where a chicken coop was erected and stocked with the intention that the orphans would learn how to raise chickens, but there was no one placed in charge on an on-going basis. As a result, the chickens ended up being stolen and the coop fell into disrepair.
Errol’s project is aimed more at providing basic requirements for these orphans, being food, clothes, school supplies and proper housing.
Basil thanked Errol for a very interesting and informative presentation which will assist our International Service committee in their deliberations as to what international projects will be funded this year.
The meeting was terminated
Joke of the day:
A man goes to visit his 85-year-old grandfather in the hospital. "How are you grandpa?" he asks.
"Feeling fine," says the old man.
"What's the food like?"
"Terrific, wonderful menus."
"And the nursing?"
"Just couldn't be better. These young nurses really take care of you."
"What about sleeping? Do you sleep OK?"
"No problem at all --- nine hours solid every night. At 10 o'clock they bring me a cup of hot chocolate and a Viagra tablet ... and that's it. I go out like a light."
The grandson is puzzled and a little alarmed by this, so rushes off to question the Sister in charge.
"What are you people doing," he says, "I'm told you're giving an 85-year-old Viagra on a daily basis. Surely that can't be true?"
"Oh, yes," replies the Sister. "Every night at 10 o'clock we give him a cup of hot chocolate and a Viagra tablet. It works wonderfully well. The hot chocolate makes him sleep, and the Viagra stops him from rolling out of bed."
