Soundings (1/24/17)

Posted by G. Stowe Talbot on Jan 24, 2017
 
Flag Salute & Invocation by Addie Brown
 
Visiting Rotarians: None
 
Guests: Dannon’s guest, Inge Drexel (Freeland Engineering).
 
Dannon related more from the history of the club 1997-8 (Greg Cowen President, 2 international students, commitment to identifying large local community projects for capital funding, Block Party with headliner Doobie Brothers).
 
Announcements
 
Dannon mentioned an upcoming meeting for the “member engagement committee” at Caffe Torre (Bellingham Towers) on January 27th at 7:30am.
 
Fellowship events planned: Hockey on Saturday, February 4th, 7:35pm - pre-game dinner? (see Tim Krell - sign up sheet next week): Bellingham against the Fresno Monsters.
 
Steve Kimberly will be organizing an International Committee fundraiser dinner at Ciao Thyme in April or May; stay tuned for more details.
 
Student of the Month
Mike Bates announced our Squalicum High School SOM, Audrey Goo. Audrey, a senior, has taken  many AP classes, is the secretary/treasurer of Future Business Leaders, president of the Interact club, a tennis player, serves as a mentor for 9th graders, and works a job!  Student Counsellor Kelly Boyer introduced Audrey.  Audrey talked about Interact Club, about 40 active member, and they do about one volunteer or charity project every month. She also talked about a mission trip to Tijuana Mexico to volunteer building a school.  
 
Business Bragging Bucket 
Michael Tilley talked about his company, Minuteman Press, purchasing John Sleeth's company, Speedy Automated Mailers. Michael thanked John for trusting him with his company.
 
Bucks in the Bay
  • Shannon Terrill has a big birthday this weekend!
  • Lesa Boxx just taught (a very long) JA day for a class of 2nd graders;
  • Phil X Hageman for the passing of a friend, Roy, and an update on the DVSAS project;
  • Andy Clay for the birthday of her late brother;
  • John Sleeth birthday and anniversary, and congrats to Michael Tilley for buying his business, surgeries were all a success and he is felling good;
  • Sean Stimac with a 40th birthday;
  • Eddie family vacation to Hawaii;
  • Glen Groenig with a joke.
Sergeant at Arms by Tim Krell
Fines for hockey trivia.
 
New Member Talk
Today’s speakers were two representatives from the local chapter of Engineers without Borders (Northwest Chapter). Collen Mitchell is the current president. Elayna Sams is a third year student at WWU.  EWB is a volunteer service organization, which conducts civil engineering projects around the world.  It has 16,000 volunteers throughout the US.  This chapter started in 2008, and since then they have already overseen three projects.  Recently the “Northwest Chapter” merged with the formerly separate WWU chapter.  
  1. Thailand project was to build a fish pond for a children’s refugee camp located near Burmese border for Burmese refugees. 
  2. Ghana project for improving sanitation.  Axim is a coastal fishing town of about 35,000 people with really bad pollution.  The EWB team built a “urine diversion compositing latrine” in 2014 for a school.  Subsequently two other similar facilities were built with local labor.
  3. Kenya water supply project:  Kiritiri is a town in central Kenya, population 3,500.  Only 40% has immediate access to potable water, the rest get water from unprotected local ponds.  Community says their greatest need is to repair the local little dam, so water would be available during the dry season. The WWU EWB team will be designing this project. 
Volunteer trips are partially funded by donations or funds from EWB, but each volunteer participant usually has to pay about $500 out of their own pocket. 
 
Respectfully submitted, 
Stowe Talbot