On Friday, April 19th, we had a busy program! Our President-in-waiting, Brian Martin, hosted the meeting. He opened the floor for announcements from the club.
After announcements, a hearty lunch of lasagna and salad was served. When lunch was finished, our program, done by the Environment Committee, began.
Dianne Dance kicked the presentation off with an overview of their movie viewing, at the bookshelf, on April 22nd. The movie is an award-winning documentary about the effects of plastic waste on our ecosystems. Dianne highlighted the three speakers that will be at the event: Lindsey Oman, Owner of the Refill, Dr. Manjusri Misra, Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Biocomposites, and Madeleine Myhill, Waste Program Coordinator at the City of Guelph.
Irene Szabo then spoke about the tree planting day on April 27th and the fair and events that will be taking place throughout the day. She also emphasized the need for Rotary volunteers. If you are available please email her or another member of the Environment Committee!
Lastly, Carolyn Weatherson, the Chair of the Committee, spoke about the history of the Environment Committee and how the Guelph Rotary Club paved the way for environmental projects in our district. In Guelph, the Environment Committee has been in place for decades even though the environment did not become a priority for Rotary until 2020. Carolyn also discussed the impact of the Committee's initiatives, emphasizing the 60,000+ trees that have been planted so far. She ended her presentation by asking Rotarians to consider joining the committee.
Thank you Environment Committee for this wonderful presentation! After the committee spoke, Barb Holmes introduced the Executive Director, Kelly Schafer, of the Career Education Council (CEC) who spoke about the Student event happening in the Hall next to ours.
Kelly discussed how CEC was founded by our club and our long history of working collaboratively together. She then discussed how the event next door came to fruition through the direct funding and support of our club.
The event is a competition where high school students from GCVI and Centennial present a plan on how to solve a charity's problem. Kelly had two of the groups, one from each school, present their solutions to us!
After the presentations, Kelly asked us to come next door to be judges in the competition. Our club sat in and watched all the presentation from 8 different groups. It was fantastic to see the ideas that high school students put together for these charities!
From May 2-5, 2024 the ArtsEverywhere Festival will take place in Guelph!
As Marva explained in her announcement to the club last Friday, the ArtsEverywhere Festival is the place where conversations, ideas, and artistic experiments come alive in the community of Guelph. From May 2nd to May 5th join members of our community for lectures, conversations, music, artistic performances, circle gatherings, literary readings, exhibitions, and much more. The full festival program will be announced soon, so please subscribe to the ArtsEverwhere email list to receive upadtes.
2023 marked the 20th edition of The Guelph Lecture—On Being, it was an exciting evening that confronted the urgencies of our time through the lens of art and ideas. By bringing together a diverse, informative, creative, and sometimes unlikely combination of people, the festival weekend offers programming that connects to the ongoing work and needs of many organizations and individuals who wish to make the world a better place.
If you are interested in attending, please follow this link for more info: https://festival.artseverywhere.ca/
On Tuesday April 9th, Guelph students won many accolades at the 51st Waterloo Wellington Science and Education Fair, held at Bingeman Park Centre. Barb Holmes, the Chair of the Children and Youth/Vocational Committee, shared the following.
On Tuesday April 9th, Guelph students won many accolades at the 51st Waterloo Wellington Science and Education Fair, held at Bingeman Park Centre.
The Rotary Club of Guelph has supported this endeavour, since its founding by former Rotarian Dr. Jim Stevens, among others and has been well supported by our Rotary scientists from the University of Guelph for many years.
At Tuesday's ceremony, three students from GCVI were recognized for their achievements. Roocha Sukla and Adhita Mahes won Gold Medals, and Remi Way, a Pewter medal. Roocha also was 1 of 9 students picked to go to the Canada wide Science Fair in Ottawa this Spring. In addition, Roocha won an Award of Excellence for having the best project in the entire fair (200 students and 168 projects). Roocha's project was "Green Armour: A Novel Plant Biostimulant".
It is our hope and plan to have these deserving students and their teacher, join us at an upcoming meeting.
Thanks to Bonnie Evans, Liz Sandals and Chelsey Mathieu for volunteering their time at this exciting event.
One of our lovely servers at the ICC, John Devorski, was away on a month-long trip to Puerto Vallarta. Here is a message he wrote about his experience, and some photos!
John wrote to use about his trip:
It's amazing how therapeutic this place is for me. If I could....I would stay here half the year! The people...the food, the countryside...the ocean...I could go on! I've been having quite a time sending pics through email, but I'll give it a try...the very best to Rotary!!!
The last pic is from my Juliette balcony. The sunsets are magnificent and every evening, there are fireworks right outside my window, off a pirate ship close to shore! Spectacular!
Thank you for sharing this message and some photos with us! We're so glad you had such an amazing time, John!
The Eradicating Human Trafficking Committee is beginning its second lawn sign campaign of the year! For info about when the campaign starts and how to buy a new sign, please read the story below.
On May 1st the second Eradicating Human Trafficking Committee lawn-sign campaign will start! Signs are $10 each. If you're interested in purchasing a sign please contact Linda Main (lindat.main@gmail.com). We're hoping to double the amount of signs that were put out in September so please tell friends and family about our initiative!
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