Member Bulletin November 4th: 2024 (Nov. 04, 2024)

The Members Bulletin

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IN THIS BULLETIN...

At last Friday's meeting, November 1st, Patti Mara, the Founder of We Choose Local spoke about her innovative company and its solution to the decline of small businesses.

Matt Webster introduced Patti. He explained that he came across We Choose Local when filtering through the Rotary Club's Inbox. It was actually Tessa, a co-op student at We Choose Local, who reached out to our club informing Matt of what the company does.

Once Matt heard of the company, he thought the presentation would be a good change up from what we're used to.

He then welcomed Patti to the stage.

Patti began by introducing herself. Patti is a business coach who has, "worked with retail brick and mortar businesses for over 20 years." What she most commonly finds is that businesses talk too much about what they sell, their products or services, and not enough time on who they are (i.e., their values, their story, etc.). A company has to be able to explain why you should choose them and not another company that offers the same service or product.

In this role, Patti explained, she would always described herself as a "passionate advocate for locally owned businesses." But after two years of lockdowns she found that she was buying more and more things through amazon and online retailers.

When she opened her door one day and found another Amazon package she began to recognize the disconnect in what she believed and her actions.

She, like many people, was no longer willing to drive to find who has what. On top of that, it's a lot harder for local companies to reach local customers through advertisements. There are less and less local newspapers and online advertising doesn't always reach the population you want.

That's when the idea hit her: local businesses need a local search engine that work's similarly to Amazon. A place where their products can be easily found, advertised, and sold.

Patti talked about her idea with a bunch of different people and they all said it was great, but it wasn't until she met Asif, her now co-partner, that she was able to get her idea off the ground.

We Choose Local's two goals are to make it easier for customer's to shop locally and easier for local businesses to get their names out there and sell their products to local customers.

Data supports the idea that most Canadians want to support local businesses. A 2019 study that found that 86% of Canadians value shopping at local businesses, but only 13% actually do. This gap has likely increased since the pandemic.

We Choose Local took this information and conducted their own set of interviews and data collection. They found largely the same results as this survey. They also discovered that many people have a hesitancy to try a local store that they don't know when they can shop at a big brand that they are well aware of.

This is exactly the gap that We Choose Local is aiming to fill. We Choose Local want to help "local businesses market appropriately [so] they can reach the full marketplace and then consumer site choice."

It has been close to two years since the initial formation of We Choose Local. In just a couple of weeks, it'll launch in Guelph.

We Choose Local is currently onboarding businesses in Guelph. The aim is to have between 20 and 25 businesses on the platform for its launch day. Some businesses were easy signups, others are more hesitant, choosing to wait until they see how the platform does.

Interestingly, a lot of people believe that shopping local is more expensive. However, "there was a study out of Quebec, that was a cross Canada study that [found] 70% of the time shopping local is the same or less. And you know, part of the things with local is you get curated products. You get really good service, often, service that helps you make a more effective buying decision."

Patti went on to say that all of us have had a negative experience of ordering things online where they don't fit, or they don't look how we thought they would, among other issues.

Importantly, 1% of all transaction profits on the platform will go to a local charity we're launching with the Children's Foundation of Guelph and Wellington.

We choose local is also offering any charity in Guelph a free page on the free page on the website. And they aim to, once a quarter, poll the people in the community to see what charity should be donated to next.

The idea being, they "want the community to feel like it's their platform."

We Choose Local chose to launch in Guelph, "for many reasons, like the demographics of wealth chosen for many reasons. Certainly the size of the community was the right size, whereas Kitchener Waterloo and Hamilton were too large for us to launch. But it was also such a dynamic community that has been rooted in you know, there's been so many ideas launched in Guelph. It's like this test ground. People here are willing to test things out."

The goal for the company is to be in 10 communities, mostly Ontario, but starting to expand in Canada in five years. Their moon shot goal is to be in 50 communities in North America in 10 years.

"And when we start at that scale, we start changing. We change the economic driving, the purchasing power back from global to local. It was local. It shifted to global, and we need to bring it back to local."

After her presentation, Patti took questions from the club. She was then thanked by Rick Le Feuvre.

Notes taken by Otter.ai, edited by Aidan Harris.

International Projects Over the Years

On October 11th, seven members from our club spoke about our club's rich history of international projects. Many of our newer members have not heard about some of the great work we've done in international service.

Noma began with a discussion of a garden project in Lesotho. The project began with a meeting with community members and educators in their childcare center.

Noma explained that they didn't have enough money from the Rotary Foundation and the district to do the vegetable production, fix the floor and have a proper kitchen for them. So our club had to focus on creating the garden for them. Noma expressed that she hopes their other needs can be fulfilled by them in the future.

The big vegetable field is about eight acres. They had potatoes, squash, and other vegetables. They have had a bountiful harvest for the past three years. It helped that Lesotho has been receiving a really good amount of rain to support their agriculture.

The other thing that the club was involved in was a fence for the property to have chickens and piggery and so on.

After Noma spoke, David Van Veen discussed the projects that he and our club were involved in in Cameroon and Uganda. He began by providing context to the importance of international service. He explained that the Rotary Club of Guelph has a really long and storied history in international service.

He discussed how the CRCID (Canadian Rotary Committee for International Development) was managed out of Guelph for many years, first by passed Governor Dave Kennedy, and then by our esteemed past president and rotary member for 52 years, Bill Stevens. Their work included Both lobbying and advocating for CRCID with CEDA, the Canadian International Development Agency, and distribution and adjudication of projects with Rotary clubs all across our country.

David then asked why we collaborate? He explained that it isn't so long ago when communicating around the world was a challenge. Even fax machines didn't come into vogue until the 1980s, let alone email, and smartphones, which both came much later.

So the biggest challenge in international projects was the ability to communicate and collaborate with a community that lived far away. So, to complete and manage projects in other countries, Rotary needed to have people on the ground and needed to build trust with these communities. This extended relationship is what brought us to where we were working in partnerships.

In this spirit, Uganda was twinned with the city of Guelph, and Cameroon was collaborating with the University of Guelph. As a result, we had Rotary members going back and forth between Uganda and Cameroon all the time.

In this process, our members were able to exchange information. David emphasized that none of the work they did was random, "neither has been the philosophy which I hope, sincerely hope continues, which is about strong partnerships, where we let the host clubs articulate their needs, and as an analogy, as good partners, we don't just put a foundation in. We build the whole house. So it takes months, years, decades."

So, in this regard, our club has been working with Cameroon and Uganda in a variety of spots for 25-30, years. It's a truly magical process.

David concluded with a story that happened during the height of COVID. During this time, Cameroon was in a Guerilla war. Our club had the opportunity to do a DEPA grant. David said, "there was some pushback on that in regards to whether it was a good decision and whether we were taking too much risk, you know, whether the guerrillas could, you know, take advantage of this situation, you know, for some of these assets." Despite this, David is incredibly proud, to this day, that the board and senior leadership made this pitch.

Simply put, "you do not desert your friends in their greatest hour of need. You stand up and you make it happen. And I'm incredibly grateful for how our club did that."

He explained that the project was fairly straight forward. Our club put up some walls in a medical center, piped water into the street, and it was just fabulous. The project was an enormous success.

After David spoke, Luisa Del Rosario came to the stage. She said that she joined the club 26 years ago in 1998. When she decided to become a member of the International Committee, she was amazed at their membership: Ab Moore, Jim Steven, Hal Jackson, and so many others. She thought to herself, "what am I doing here?"

She explained that she didn't know what she was going to do until she received a call from the committee explaining that two people from Cameroon needed to be housed for the weekend, and they asked her if she could take them in. She agreed.

So the two people from Cameroon came to her house. Luisa, being a good host, took them to see the CN tower. They also came to her store. Their eyes popped when they saw the sewing room, "they thought, Oh, this is a good thing to bring to Cameroon."

So, Dorothy, the one Cameroon lady, asked Luisa if she could come to Cameroon. Luisa said she would if the club sent her. The club had a meeting shortly after, and agreed to send her.

Percy and Luisa went together. Percy was a pharmacist delivering a machine to Cameroon. Luisa was going to see if this sewing project was possible. For 12 days the two of them travelled.

Every village was the same story; they all needed help. Luisa, one day had an idea that they could help with school uniforms.

Her idea was welcomed right away. Two years later, Luisa went back with a sewing machine. She taught dozens of women how to use it. When Luisa went back several times, the women were doing better and better. Over 350 families had benefitted from the project already. What the women would do was make the uniforms and sell them and then use the money to send their kids to school. And so they had food on the table, and plus their kids had a little bit more education.

After the success of her sewing project in Cameroon, Luisa was invited to Uganda. She went to Uganda with the same idea in mind. She brought 12 sewing machines and taught about 30 women how to use them. She divided the machines among the women and had neighbours share with each other.

The only machine that was given to a single woman was a widow that had nothing. When Luisa gave her the sewing machine, she couldn't stop thanking her. The woman brought her to her humble home and said, "I'm going to make some money and help my kids..."

Luisa then welcomed Rosemary to speak.

In 2019, Rosemary and Luisa launched a third project in Cameroon. Rosemary explained that she was asked to be on the Committee by Ab Moore and Jim Stevens to work on global grants.

Jim and Ab decided that they should go to Uganda. They ended up being guest speakers at the local club. It was close to our club's centennial celebration. Rosemary said, "we told them all about the centennial and how we had all these things going on."

After the meeting, they were invited to visit the home of one of the club's members. Mama Angelino was very well known in the area, and she had a property of about 10 acres outside of Mambali. Angelino employed about 25 people, and on this property.

So the Rotarians, who were in the Mambali Club did a community assessment. The

assessment included seven different projects, and then they took Rosemary and Luisa to each of them. They took them to a school, and other areas around the community that needed work. Rosemary and Luisa were overwhelmed at the possibilities, but knew that they could only do one project.

After the two of them came back to Canada, they brought all the literature from the different projects. The committee decided that the school was what they would focus on because there were almost 600 students and 12 teachers. With close to 50 students per teacher.

The school wanted to have their latrines replaced because the old ones were in bad shape. The one for the boys wasn't even working anymore. One of the other things they wanted to do was put a fence around the property to keep animals out of the school grounds. It was also located near a major road with lot of cars and trucks.

Everything had to be agreed upon by with Rotary International. They got the go ahead and had a budget of close to $50,000 and with cash donations and funds from our club and funds from international.

The club was ready to go and then COVID came along. Because of this, it was difficult to obtain the materials that they had to use to build the latrine and fence. The club worked as diligently as they could.

The local club invited their district governor to plant a little tree in honor of this global grant. It has become a landmark where they are. Rosemary ended by saying that if any of us are given a similar opportunity to take it. It is a wonderful experience.

After Rosemary, Dianne Dance and Helmuth Slisarenko spoke about the Water First Project. Helmuth discussed the local Rotary lager project. Breweries in Guelph agreed to give our club $50 cents for every can that was sold. Twenty cents went to our club and twenty to the Peterborough club, the remaining 10 cents went to Rotary International Water Projects. The project was kicked off at the Curling Club in Guelph.

Presidents were invited from every club in District 7080, as well as the partner club from Peterborough. This was followed by a tour of Wellington Brewery. Eventually 35 clubs were involved. By the end of the campaign, each club had $4,000 dollars for a water project.

Dianne Dance then explained that this was around the same time that Ontario and Canada were grappling with the water crisis in Indigenous communities.

An Indigenous Awareness Committee had been trying to figure out ways to help, but it's not easy, especially as one little club. The seed money was provided by the lager campaign. A speaker came in from Water First, and she told us about this program. And with that, the project came together.

Dianne then explained the project, it is an "internship with Water First, [that] takes students from First Nations and teaches them to be water certified." This fills the gap between the infrastructure that the government is building and the need for skilled individuals who can operate this infrastructure.

The club was really excited about this idea. Ab Moore explained to Dianne that she should apply for a Global Grant. In the end, our club received $115,000 that went to help fund the internship. Dianne said, "And I have to tell you, Luisa, this is my 'Do not cry' point... we received $500 from a club in Africa. So when you're talking about all this work that we do, you know, they are so appreciative." It was a really touching moment for her and the club.

Dianne was glad to see the project finished before Ab passed away. He was so crucial to the project and really excited about it. I was very glad to see it got done before we lost AB, because he was really excited about it.

After Dianne spoke, Matt concluded the presentation by showing some photos from past president Nanita Mohan's trip and Sue Rickett's to India. He encouraged people to connect with Nanita to learn more about the trip.