Guatemala Literacy Project
Meeting for the week of February 10 - February 16, 2020
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: Guatemala Literacy Project
Speaker: Emily Paver
Is this your first time to visit us? If so, welcome to our weekly online meeting! To complete our meeting, please continue reading from here to the bottom of this page.Each Monday our week’s meeting is posted early in the morning, U.S. Pacific Time. These meetings are designed so that you can read and watch what we post anytime during the week. The entire meeting takes about 60 minutes to complete, with the video conference recording of the program being the bulk of the time.Note that you can easily read this meeting with your favorite device, so feel free to take our meeting on the go with you. Please also make sure to complete the attendance form at the bottom and leave a comment. Enjoy!
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Table of Contents
Welcome to the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley!
Here’s a message from President Tzviatko:
Tzviatko
President, Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley
Guests, we are happy to have you join us this week!
As we see it, our flexibility as an online, asynchronous club allows a special type of service to Rotarians around the world: we make it easier for anyone to strive for and maintain 100% attendance. That keeps you engaged with Rotary's events and ideas, and provides a moment of inspiration for devoting your creativity, talents, and resources to good causes.You are certainly not required to pay anything in order to attend our meetings. However, if you would like to make a small contribution to our service efforts, you are welcome to do so in our secure Happy Dollars section down the page. This could be what you normally pay at your own club's meetings for lunch, for example. Any amount is welcome, but first and foremost, we're happy you've joined us, and hope you will share with others who we are and what we do to help inspire Service Above Self.And don't forget to fill out our attendance form so you get an email you can pass on to your club's secretary!
The Four Way Test
The Four-Way Test is a nonpartisan and nonsectarian ethical guide for Rotarians to use for their personal and professional relationships.Of the things we think, say or do
Is it the TRUTH?
Is it FAIR to all concerned?
Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
Angela from Sydney, Australia
Club 5 Year Anniversary Reflections
Shags from Walnut Creek, CA, USA
Weekly Funny with the Lady of Laughter (LOL)
We believe laughter is an important part of life, and we should all make time to laugh a little. This segment of our meeting is meant to tickle you just enough. These funnies are curated by member Yvonne Kwan, our “Lady of Laughter!”
Happy Valentine's Day! Whether you're celebrating with a special person or just celebrating loving yourself, here are some jokes to make you feel the love.
What did one boat say to another?Are you up for some row-mance?
What did the atom tell the molecule?I've got my ion you!
Why shouldn't you marry a tennis player?Because love means nothing to them!
Weekly Inspiration
Every week we start our meetings with a short video highlighting innovation, inspiration, entrepreneurship, or social change.
Mehman Ahmadli is a master of meykhana. It’s a form of freestyle poetry sometimes set to the beat of a Persian drum. Poets compete against each other, and there is no room for hesitation—you have to be ready to speak the second your opponent stops. Break the flow, and you’re done. We join Ahmadli and his friends at a pub in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku to see how a faceoff goes down.
Member Spotlight
This week's Member Spotlight is Hardeep Singh! Here is what they have been up to lately:
My mother was diagnosed with metastatic ovarian cancer last summer. The diagnosis was so sudden and unexpected, and it turned our family, friends, and local community upside down. We were a mess. But, we took this horrifying news and turned it into a blessing.We decided to use our time together as a family wisely and enjoy each others' company. As a family, this winter we went on a road trip to Arizona, enjoying both Sedona and the Grand Canyon. We had the best time together, and it was probably one of the best vacations I have ever been on.And of course, given that our family has 3 Rotarians, we always have to do something Rotary-related on our trips. We found out that another Rotarian friend of ours, Brett Morey, was traveling in the area at the same time as us, so we definitely made time to see each other. A family vacation is never complete without meeting another Rotarian or attending another Rotary club's meeting.
World of
Collect, contribute, connect to end polio
Learn more at https://blog.rotary.org/2019/12/19/collect-contribute-connect-to-end-polio/
Through a Rotarian's Lens
Sometimes a photo can capture an amazing moment. In this section Member Keith Marsh shares his incredible photography!If you'd like to submit a photo for this section please contact Keith.
One of my favorite Milky Way photos was taken in the Bristlecone Pine forest in the White Mountains east of Bishop, CA at an elevation of 11,000 ft. These are the oldest living things on earth with some dating back almost 5,000 years. But, this pales in comparison to the age of the light coming from the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.This light takes 25,000 years to reach us traveling at 186,000 miles per second (speed of light). This photo was created using a double exposure technique I developed about 5 years ago. It takes about 4 hours to complete the two exposures.
Learn Something New
This section is curated by members Shags Shagrin and Rushton Hurley and aims to teach our members and guests something new, fun and useful! If you have any ideas on a fun trick or skill you'd like to share please contact Rushton or Shags.
My Favorite Kitchen Toys, Part 3
Several Thanksgivings ago, we were in SoCal visiting with Karen's family, and her cousin prepared the turkeys in an upright infra-red fryer powered by propane. It was amazingly juicy and tender, but at $200 or so, I wasn't interested in buying something so large that would only be used once or twice a year.Last year I discovered on that is electric (important, as the other must be used outside) and was under $100, so we got it. A "test-turkey" a week or so before Thanksgiving was amazing, so we took it to where we would be having Thanksgiving dinner and let it do its thing on an eighteen pound dry-brined turkey.In two hours, it was ready to eat! For New Year's Day with our local children, we used it on an eleven pound bone-on prime rib roast -- it does make a bit of a hole in the center, but it closes up while resting. Perfectly done in 90 minutes! Of course, when doing a roast, you can turn off the center heating element that is essential to cooking poultry from both inside and outside. The next project will be an entire pork leg, like an uncured large ham. We'll need some help eating it, so maybe a spring social around it?
Coffee With a Rotarian
A natural part of Rotary is the networking and the fellowship you get out of meeting other Rotarians. Coffee With a Rotarian is a monthly program of our club where we match participating club members for one-on-one virtual (or in some cases in person) coffee meetings, so they can learn more about each other. This program is organized by member Tzviatko Chiderov.
This week we have Mahmood from San Jose, CA, USA reporting on a chat with Sandy from Fremont, CA, USASandy is a recent Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley club member.Former ER and ICU nurse, Works at Valley MedicalPassionate about eRotary and involvement in local projects.Among several items among them her involvement in Rotary Club and discovering Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley. We also discussed local programs as she is managing membership.I talked about the big issues locally – Homelessness and mental health. We decide to explore a local program we can work on possible solutions for homelessness and mental health. I am working on a brief and will discuss further if we can get that going with NGO and or with Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley.Target is end of January 2020.We encourage all club members to participate in Coffee With a Rotarian. You can sign up here!
New Member Introduction
Please welcome our new member, Sarah Tuberty!
Here is a little bit about her:
Hello! It is so nice to meet you and to be a new member of Rotary! I was born into a Rotary family and knew at age 8 that I would grow up and be a Rotarian, so it is such a surreal moment that it is happening right now (cue happy tears!).
I have just graduated with a doctorate in Occupational Therapy from Boston University and just moved back to Philadelphia to return to work as a Flight Attendant. My skilled work surrounds disability advocacy and I want to exist working in this space full-time, while still managing to pay my bills. I grew up with a limb difference- where I have a smaller left hand and no fingers. This lead to a lot of shame and stigma.I am working to help break the social stigma we have on disability, my platforms are: Disarming Disability Podcast, Super Abled Comics, and performing in adaptive Aerial arts! I would love help and advice from you all on creating non-traditional work experiences and in return would love to help provide inclusive access for club members, future club members, or partnerships to Rotary Programing. Thank you!
Welcome to the club, Sarah!!
Service Report
Tell us about service you’ve done recently in your community.Click here to fill out The Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley Service Survey
On the first meeting of every month, we feature service reports from club members for the previous month. Thanks for your service everyone!
Club Announcements
Haven't joined the conversation on Facebook yet? Consider joining the conversation by signing into our club members-only Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/rotarysiliconvalley/
Our Events & Projects
We hold our meetings online, but we do regular service projects and social events in the Silicon Valley! This section is updated every week with our upcoming events. We welcome guests to all of the events and service projects listed here.
Past Events:
Upcoming Events:
All times are Pacific Time! (San Francisco time)
District 5170 Events
Area 8 Service Project - Rise Against HungerFeb 29, 2020, 10am-12pmMonta Vista High School Cafeteria, 21840 McClellan Rd., Cupertino, CA 95014More info at https://tinyurl.com/area8serviceproject
All times are Pacific Time! (San Francisco time)More events coming soon! All events are open to guests, unless otherwise mentioned. Feel free to join us! If you ever have questions, please email inquiries@siliconvalleyrotary.com
Happy Dollars: Do Good by Sharing Something Good
Each week we ask our members to share stories with the club and toss in a few dollars to support our efforts. The primary goal of this section is to provide a fun way of getting to know each fellow members and guests, while giving back to a good cause.
Happy dollars is an opportunity to share something positive that has happened in your life whether it is personal or business. Think of it as your opportunity to brag a little, but also put a little bit into a karma jar. The money donated through happy dollars is put to charitable use, and the message that you leave for happy dollars will be posted in our online meeting the following week for the entire week for folks to see! (Pending that it’s appropriate!)Here are the happy dollars contributions from last week!This section is usually updated on the early hours of Saturday, so contributions made over the weekend may not be listed here.
Keith Marsh made a $10 donation.Oscar pool.
Rory Olsen made a $20 donation.Unseasonably warm weather today--in the high seventies! Please apply my gift to Polio Plus.
Helena Pleinert made a $20 donation.I am happy because a friend stood by me when I needed him
Catherine A made a $25 donation.I am signing up for the Oscar pool, plus an additional donation! What a great idea!
Brett Sham made a $20 donation.Oscar pool x2 (Brett & Angela)
Raquel D'Garay-Juncal made a $10 donation.Oscars Pool
Rushton Hurley made a $10 donation.For the Oscars! (Full disclosure: I think I've seen exactly one of all the films in all the questions, and so I used The Force to choose. Not entirely sure that was fair of me. Can you guess which film I've seen?)
Selected Comments
Every week at the bottom of our meetings, there is a comments section for members and guests to tell us what they enjoyed about the meeting or to ask questions to the speaker. We select a few comments every week from last week’s meeting to be featured during this week’s meeting.
Here are the comments selected from last week’s meeting.
Ferheen Abbasi said:
Thank you, Tzviatko, for your lovely message :) I enjoy these video messages!Happy Birthday, Mark!Yvonne, thanks for the cat jokes! My kittens loved them hehehe.Keith, thanks for the update on Project Amigo! If any of you are interested, we did a program recording a few months ago about the project!Hehe I love that picture of me and Nan!Congrats to Parasite for winning so many Oscars!!Finally, Sharda, thank you so much for your amazing presentation. It was such an honor to participate live :)
Catherine A said:
Many thanks to Sharda, and to Ferheen and the RESV programs team, for this excellent program. Closely related to Sharda's concerns are those of deaf individuals who depend on often very poor broadcast closed captioning (and their related machine translation devices) for emergency, news and health information. As a librarian I had some regular patrons who were deaf, some of whom were also non-native speakers. This raised my awareness of the poor quality of machine translators in relation to broadcast closed captioning and machine translation.
(To see this in action, turn off the sound on your devices and turn on closed captioning, then read the unfolding text in news and informational programming for a few hours. You will see numerous errors in names, complex words, many unfinished sentences, plus other important elements of information which are not being communicated fully to those who are deaf and/or who are using machine translators to gain information which is easily available to hearing individuals.) As a former PBS/NPR employee, I know that WGBH is a central hub for PBS and client Non-PBS closed captioning inserts on broadcast TV. It could and should be so much better. (Comments may be sent to: https://help.wgbh.org/s/art... )
Many thanks for the Great Big Story videos and for Keith March photos; they are both really awesome and favorites each week.
Nathan Gildart said:
Sharda, thank you for the great presentation. My students are beginning a unit on the causes and consequences of internal conflicts. I'll be able to share Translators without Borders as a nice example of technology being used to help those in crisis situations. Great work!
Love the cats gags Yvonne - my G12 students were doing some cat jokes today, coincidentally, so I'll have to share these with them.
Very cool post office!
Be sure to leave a comment at the end of this week’s meeting after you watch the program below, and perhaps you’ll see your comment featured next week!
Program: Guatemala Literacy Project
Speaker: Emily Paver
Every week we bring to you a new program on innovation, entrepreneurship, and education, and how those contribute to service to others. Special thanks to member Roger Plested for leading our club's Programs Committee in finding us amazing speakers each week.The Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley seeks to explore perspectives on service from across the world. The views of the speakers in our programs are their own, and unless stated otherwise, are not necessarily reflective of the views of our eClub nor Rotary International.
If you have an idea for a cool speaker, please feel free to reach out to them directlyor submit THIS FORM so our Program Committee can contact them!
The Guatemala Literacy Project (GLP) is one of the largest grassroots, multi-club, multi-district projects in Rotary. More than 600 clubs and 80 districts have been working together since 1997 to improve education for underserved students in Guatemala.In that time, 208,500 students have been served through four sustainable programs that are tested and proven to work. In 2017, RI President Ian Riseley called the GLP “the gold standard of Rotary projects” for its sustainability and impact.
Share your thoughts or ask our speaker a question in the comments at the bottom of this meeting page!
Upcoming Program Recording Schedule
All of our guest speakers and programs are recorded live online over Zoom video conference. We welcome members and guests to join us in one of these upcoming recordings. Recordings are approximately 30 minutes long and are subject to change without notice.
Our online video conference room link for these recordings is always https://zoom.us/j/5104080000. You are welcome to join us! Please note the timezone listed for all recordings is US Pacific Time (San Francisco, California, USA).If you can’t join the live recording, please send your questions for an upcoming speaker to programs@siliconvalleyrotary.com.
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