Larry Whatmore, MBA, CPA, CMA

Assistant Director, Financial Services, University of Toronto Scarborough | President, Scarborough Community Renewal Organization | Treasurer and Assistant Governor, Rotary International

Dave Hardy introduced Larry, who is no stranger to our club. While Larry is the Treasurer and Assistant Governor of our district, his presentation focused on SCRO the Scarborough Community Renewal Organization.Larry's official visit to our club will be on the twenty fifth of September, this year.

In February 2014, the Scarborough Rotary (a coalition of five Rotary clubs in Scarborough) approved an action plan with the purpose of advancing community renewal in Scarborough. The 2014 Scarborough Community Renewal Campaign was initiated to address the trend towards increasingly negative indicators of community well-being in Scarborough by engaging residents, businesses, institutions, academics and Rotarians in community-building.

Scarborough’s multi-cultural community is unique and vibrant. Its residents are well-educated and the schools, college and university have great reputations. Many residents are both locally and globally connected entrepreneurs who are innovative and economically strong. However, Scarborough emerged as a suburban area, and as a result lacks centralized economic and employment hubs, social services, effective urban planning, large-scale arts and culture activities, state of the art health care infrastructure and higher order transit services that meet the needs of its more than 600,000 residents.

SCRO contains organizations such as The Scarborough Business Association and the Institute for new Suburbanism. Larry talked about a push to revitalize Scarborough town center, The feasibility of creating a performance Arts Center and the need for a Trade Training center in Scarborough. SCRO has also taken over the Scarborough Walk of Fame. The first event was very successful.

While being apolitical SCRO has been involved in recent political debates including the recent Toronto mayoral election.

To listen to Larry.s full presentation, please click on this link:

Larry's presenttion.MP3

Arthur thanked Larry for a really interesting presentation.

Announcements

Arthur announced: The community Services Meeting will be held at the Red Lobster on Tuesday. Bring your wife.

Had Barry been able to attend the meeting he would have announced an international group meeting on Tuesday at Remezzo's at 6.00pm.

Dhanni fined everyone who was not wearing a Rotary pin. She also asked for happy bucks.

Saty Thanked our club for our contribution to his club's palliative care project.

Peter donated as he said, to get the show on the road.

Arthur's son was interviewed on Global News on the subject of the drug OZEMPIC. His daughter got a new job also.

Frank is happy to be back

Avrum was happy that Larry stepped in on short notice to present today.

John let everyone know the he and Dhanni will soon be grandparents

With nothing else for the good of Rotary, President Avrum closed the meeting.