Student Loans
Meeting for the week of February 18-24, 2019
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: Student Loans
Speaker: Jessie Suren
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; read it while on public transit, waiting in line for coffee, or even at the park! Please also make sure to complete the attendance form at the bottom and leave a comment. Enjoy!
Welcome to the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley!
Here’s a message from President-Elect Tzviatko:
Dear Rotarians and Guests,
Thanks to everyone who voted in our club's election for the 2019-2020 Board of Directors. Here are the election results:- President-Elect: Raquel D’Garay-Juncal- Treasurer: Heather Shaw- Secretary: Monique Ziesenhenne- Director: Ferheen AbbasiRaquel, Heather, Monique and Ferheen: Congratulations! I look forward to working with you during the 2019-2020 Rotary year!Everyone, please enjoy this week's program on understanding the student loan crisis, and don't forget to leave your thoughts and questions in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
Yours in Rotary,
Tzviatko Chiderov
President-Elect,
Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley
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!”
February 18 is National Battery Day! Let's get charged up with these jokes!
Why don't dead batteries cost anything?They're free of charge!
What do you call a power outage?A current event!
Have you had enough battery jokes? I know, they're re-volting.
Weekly Inspiration
Every week we start our meetings with a short video highlighting innovation, inspiration, entrepreneurship, or social change.
As a little girl, Basma Hameed suffered a painful accident that left half of her face obscured by third-degree burns. She endured hundreds of surgeries and laser treatments to repair her damaged skin before a plastic surgeon told her nothing else could be done—an answer she refused to accept. Hameed went on to pioneer a groundbreaking procedure that allows pigment to be implanted into scar tissue as a way of camouflaging the damage. Today, equipped with a steady hand and unflinching optimism, she helps thousands of people heal from the inside out at her Basma Hameed Clinic.
World of
How to master Rotary’s public image campaign
Learn more at https://blog.rotary.org/2019/01/28/how-to-master-rotarys-public-image-campaign/
Through a Rotarian's Lens
Sometimes a photo can capture an amazing moment. Back by popular demand, Keith Marsh's photography will feature in this new section, curated by member Keith Marsh himself!If you'd like to submit a photo for this section please contact Keith.
Natural Bridges National Monument is located in southern Utah. It is one of the darkest night locations in the United States and almost completely free from light polution. This was one of my first Astrophotographic Nightscapes where I used two exposures over a four hour period. The photo titled "Milky Way over Owachomo Bridge" won the Landscape Award at the Marin County (CA) Fair a few years ago.
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 Ferheen from Santa Clara, CA, USA reporting on a chat with Rory from Houston, TX, USA.
What incredible luck for me to have two CWAR sessions in a row with members who love cats!!! As you can see in the picture, that's Rory's cat, Jasmine! :) He has two cats, one that lives upstairs (Jasmine) and another that lives downstairs. If you ever take a look at Rory's Twitter, he's always retweeting pictures of cats. Lol.I was always very curious about how Rory heard about our eClub, especially because he lives in Texas and he said that he found us after having to do makeup meetings for his old club. I'm glad that our club is so flexible for folks like Rory who can't always make in person meetings.We also got to talk a lot about Houston. I visited Houston for the first time in October. It's a really nice town with such diversity and amazing seafood. The potholes were the only thing I wasn't a huge fan of! Thanks for a great coffee, Rory!
We encourage all club members to participate in Coffee With a Rotarian. You can sign up here!
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!
For Members Only
February 2019 Club Announcements
"Hi! Do you have any questions about the club?" - The New Facebook Chatbot on Main Pages. If you have visited any of our non-meeting pages in the past few days, you'll notice that we now have a Facebook Chatbot active on our site. This is one of our new initiatives to try to convert more prospective leads into members, as well as to increase interaction between guests and our club. Messages will be responded to by our social media team. Please note this messenger chat isn't designed for club members. Members, if you still want to contact someone, please direct your notices to the email of the member or the officer you want to reach.
2019 Homepage Refresh! After hearing feedback from members, the webmasters can now say that we have finally gotten around to updating the main hero image on the homepage into something that we believe better represents the global and the digital nature of our club. We'll be periodically changing the graphic throughout the year, as we continue to refresh different parts of our site.
Join page updated! The webmaster team has done a much-needed facelift for the Join page. The start of a new year is the perfect time to share with friends and colleagues our Join page!
Weekly Meeting Disqus Reactions Updated. Did you know you can leave a reaction for each of our weekly meetings now? Right above the comments for a weekly meeting, you'll now find four different reactions you can vote for. We've also added some comment policy, and are working on fine-tuning a few other pieces to the comments and the meetings.
New year, new posts! eClub Rotarians - 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.
Also be sure to join our Meetup Group for automatic calendar updates and to RSVP for our events! These are open to all guests as well!
Upcoming Events:
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
What would you like to do?
Hey Members! Let us know what you want to do by posting in our members-only Facebook Group (if you don’t have access, please request it with Webmaster Mitty). Remember, you’re only taking advantage of the full impact of Rotary when you’re stepping up to get involved.
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.
Rory Olsen made a $20 donation.Bright, sunny day. All is well!
Brian Liddicoat made a $15 donation.Looking forward to getting in some skiing this weekend with my kids.
Monique Ziesenhenne made a $20 donation.Happy to have a 3-day weekend ahead! Please put towards Club General Fund!
Share your happy dollars thoughts with us and help with doing good around the world.
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.
Rebecca Fry said:LOVED this meeting! So great to see one of our Min-e-Grants in action. Product donations for medical missions is part of my work at Johnson & Johnson, so it's always great to hear about the impact that medical missions have to the local communities being served. Well done Nicole for your presentation and all of the work you do!
Christopher Bryant said:Outstanding job in Vietnam. Those supplies could be life changing! Your passion and attitude already show great attributes of a future physician. My first meeting. I enjoyed it 👍
BDL said:Nicole, this is wonderful work. Thank you for what you are doing. Aside from that, i would LOVE to visit Vietnam. Maybe a service project trip in the future (with a few extra days to gorge myself on great Vietnamese food).
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: Student Loans
Speaker: Jessie Suren
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.
Jessie is a graduate of La Salle University in Philadelphia, PA. In 2010 she received her Bachelor's Degree in Criminal Justice and Communication. Jessie has worked in Asset Maintenance at American Education Services as a Student Loan Collector. Thereshe received extensive training on student loans including repayment options, deferments, forgiveness and laws regarding student loans. She also learned from her own experiences of getting rid of over $90,000 of student loans most of which was done in just 2 years.She is passionate about helping and educating others with student debt and spreading awareness of the student loan crisis so that others considering school may learn and it can change or stop in the future.She shares her tips and experiences on her YouTube channel, "The Rich Cool Aunt".
We had some audio issues during this recording - sorry about that.
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.
You’re Almost Done! Please complete The Attendance Survey…
Thanks for reading and watching this week’s meeting. You have two last things to do before you’re done.
We have a very short attendance survey below for you to fill out to record your attendance.
Visiting Rotarians, this is how you can get an email receipt to pass along to your club’s secretary as proof that you’ve attended our meeting if you need it for makeups.
Non-Rotarian Guests, we would love to see who is dropping by our meetings! This part is optional for you. If you think you may want to join our eClub at some point in the future, we would strongly recommend you fill out the attendance form as it will improve your chances of success for your membership application.
