President Jen opened the meeting today with The Pledge of Allegiance and the singing of God Bless America. PP Jason LaPlante gave the invocation before lunch.
VISITORS:
Adam Dow announced our visiting Rotarians Dawna Hannan from the Auburn-Lewiston Breakfast Club and Catherine Lewis from the Hallowell Club.
DRAWING & HAPPY DOLLARS:
The 50/50 Drawing was won today by Mr. Ed Leveque and of course he had a Happy Dollar for that!
Other Happy Dollars came from John Belisle, Shawn Wright, Nancy Brown, Mac McPeake, Catherine Lewis and Ray Martel.
FOUNDATION MINUTE:
In lieu of a regular Foundation Minute, Peter Kowalski made a special Paul Harris Fellow presentation to PDG Sylvia Plourde.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
President Jen announced that our club will be receiving a Ready Read Award on May 6, for the donations of our books and volunteer readers to the Androscoggin Head Start Program last September. Jen and other members of the Board will accept the award on our behalf and bring back to the club. The award is given to those who promote reading readiness to children.
Community Service Chair
Shawn also announced our next community event….Autism Movie Event…to be held Saturday, April 23. Save the date as we will need volunteers.
PROGRAM:
Rotarian Bill Denehey, Vocational Service Chair, was our speaker today. Bill spoke about the work that the committee is doing to promote vocational service with a multi-year strategic plan to promote ethics in business and schools. We promote our own Rotarians’ businesses with our Classification Talks and Business Profiles.
Bill and committee are working on resurrecting the Lisbon High School Rotaract Club. We are hoping to work on joint community projects with the Interact Club. We are also looking to promote the 4-Way Test at the High School and Middle School levels with a portable video curriculum.
Bill also spoke of our Scholarship Trust Fund which is in good hands. We are at about $112,000. The goal is to earn enough income to sufficiently fund our $7000 scholarships annually while protecting the principal. There is a Board of Trustees made up of Rotarians who are watching this for us.
Bill invited all to attend our annual Awards Banquet on May 11, where we will give out seven scholarships to area high school seniors as well as a few community awards. He encourages all to attend this inspiring evening to hear what our youth are doing to serve their community. Each winner will give a brief speech about “Service Above Self.”