Rotary Membership: Sharing Your Rotary Passion
This Meeting's Highlights
Speaker: Kristi Govertsen
Program: Rotary Membership: Sharing Your Rotary Passion
Meeting for the week of August 3rd to August 9, 2015
Greetings
Welcome from President-elect Mitty Chang
Hello Silicon Valley eClub Rotarians and guests!
My name is Mitty, and I am the President-elect of the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley! I'm excited to be presiding over this week's meeting on behalf of President Rushton. Rushton thought it would be fun to give me a taste of understanding how much work he puts into these meetings every week. All I can say is: Rushton, you're a good man and great president. I'm glad you're still going to be running most of these for the rest of this year!Club members and guests -- Happy August! To think that our eClub has already been through 6 months of meetings. This week is our eClub's 28th meeting! Even though we are a new Rotary Club, our eClub has been active locally in the Silicon Valley -- holding two socials in-person every month, and doing community service locally throughout the bay area. We're also starting this Rotary year with a positive net growth of new members, with more members in the queue.For the month of August, I would like to challenge each of our members to invite one guest to check out our weekly meeting, or to attend one of our in-person socials in the bay area. I think we can double our membership by the end of this Rotary year.And to our Rotarian guests from other clubs: we want to especially welcome all of you to this week's meeting on Rotary membership. One of the main sources of revenue for our eClub to power its grants and operations is through donations we collect at our weekly meetings. We ask that you consider contributing whatever you are comfortable with donating. What many Rotarians do is donate the regular cost of a Rotary meal to the efforts of our club. We provide several options below:
Send via our secure Happy Dollars form.
Send via Google Wallet to: ecsv.rotary@gmail.com
Send via PayPal to: ecsv.rotary@gmail.com
To pay via Google Wallet or PayPal, you'll need to log in to your account with those companies.Those of you who prefer a more traditional approach can mail a check made out to the Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley to our treasurer:
℅ Allen Thompson,
13500 Cascade Ct.,
Bakersfield CA 93314.
Non-Rotarian guests, you are certainly welcome to help us out, too!
Dues Reminder
If you haven't paid your dues for July to December, make sure to do so! You can contact Treasurer Allen with questions (treasurer@siliconvalleyrotary.com), or go to the dues page and get that handled now.
Weekly Inspiration
Our meeting every week is focused at bringing you inspiration and innovation. Every week we share with you something we think is cool and inspiring. This week, we're sharing with you something Google is doing called Camp Google. Check out this video:
Camp Google is a FREE summer camp for kids that Google is hosting online. The curriculum features great questions that you might normally not think of as an adult. These questions are answered by the power of science! Not only are these videos beautifully crafted for kids, but we also think that it's pretty cool that Google is running a FREE summer camp that's online and accessible by any child with internet access.You can check out the camp by going to camp.withgoogle.com.
This week is Music Week at Camp Google!
The Power of Images
Star Trails over Yosemite
Every week we showcase an inspirational photo. Many of these photos, including this week's, comes from our resident Camera Czar Keith Marsh.This week's photo by Rotarian Keith Marsh is of Yosemite. It shows star trails over Half Dome and Nevada Falls taken over 1 hour at 30 second intervals with 30 second exposures. The young man in the foreground is a recent graduate of Baylor University. He and his buddies were traveling around the country in an old van before they have to start their careers in the real world. They cooked their dinner at Glacier Point as Keith was photographing.In the wise words of Keith, "You meet the nicest people when you have a camera."
Happenings
What We Do
Upcoming Events:
Saturday, August 29: Wine & Paella Social in Oakland, CAMark your calendars for August 29th for our wine & paella social in Oakland! We are thinking late afternoon or early evening, but more details will be coming next week!
September SocialsLook forward to more potlucks, beer and wine socials, and much more coming up for our September and October calendar dates! If you have any suggestions for socials in the Silicon Valley / Bay Area, please leave us a comment in the DISQUS section of this meeting.
Rotary District 5170 Conference & Annual eClub MeetupClub members -- please mark your calendars for the weekend of Friday, April 29 through Sunday, May 1st. That weekend is the weekend of our Rotary District Conference (District 5170). The conference will be happening in San Ramon, California. We'll be talking more about this event as it gets closer to the date. As we understand it's hard for some of our members who live further away to make our regular monthly socials in the Silicon Valley, we do ask that all members strongly make an effort to attend our annual meet up during the Rotary District Conference. It's a great time to meet and break bread with your fellow club members, while representing our club at our district conference. More information coming soon.
The World of Rotary
A Message on Membership from Rotary International President Ravindran
For Rotarians and club members, you can learn more about the Rotary Global Rewards program by logging into Rotary.org with your Rotary account and searching for "Rotary Global Rewards."There are quite a few notable discounts, including discounts for travel and for attractions such as Disneyland!
Rotary's Four Way Test
One of the guiding principles Rotarians live by is called the Four-Way Test. It goes like this:The Four-Way Test 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?
Service Time
Last week of the month! If you haven't reported service you've done in the last few weeks, now is the time. Tell the story of how you have helped others, whether in a big or small way, and let's build our encouragement of each other to regularly experience the joy and better perspective that come with helping those in need.Next week, we'll catch up on what we've been up to! Report yours here.
Happy Dollars
Welcome to our Happy Dollars spot! Think of Happy Dollars as an online karma jar. If something good has happened to you this week, or if you want to give a shoutout to anyone or about anything, you can toss a few bucks into our online happy dollars (see form below). The money goes directly to our club to fund great projects, and we'll post your happy dollars comment in next week's meeting!Here are the happy dollar submissions from last week:
member Hardeep Singh (California, USA) ($15)Excited to be a new member of this club, and feeling happy after attending the Special Olympics World Games Opening Ceremony with 1,000 or so other Rotarians in LA!
member Chris Cochrane (Ontario, Canada) ($20)For a successful "stuffectomy". Recovering fast. The excellent Karma is working!
member Mahmood Khan (California, USA) ($15) Glad that Chris is getting better. Sorry I missed the Pot Luck at Rushton's - it was very kind of you to hos it. :-(Will catch up with local folks soon.Heather Shaw (California, USA) ($15)Feeling thankful for a fabulous trip to NJ to visit my Mom and 6 siblings
Sharings
The Tidbit
Every week we feature a trick or hack that can make your life just a little bit more convenient. Sometimes these are tech tidbits, sometimes these are life hacks. This week we have our club member, Yvonne Kwan, showing us some Youtube keyboard tricks.
Cheat Sheet: K = play/pause, J = rewind 10 seconds, L = fast forward 10 seconds, M = mute/unmute
A Little Humor
from this Reddit thread
An engineer dies and goes to hell. He's hot and miserable, so he decides to take action. The A/C has been busted for a long time, so he fixes it. Things cool down quickly. The moving walkway motor jammed, so he unjams it. People can get from place to place more easily. The TV was grainy and unclear, so he fixes the connection to the Satellite dish and now they get hundreds of high def channels, although they still cannot watch Breaking Bad on AMC.One day, God decides to look down on Hell to see how his grand design is working out and notices that everyone is happy and enjoying umbrella drinks. He asks the Devil what's up?The Devil says, "Things are great down here since you sent us an engineer.""What?" says God. "An engineer? I didn't send you one of those. That must have been a mistake. Send him upstairs immediately."The Devil responds, "No way. We want to keep our engineer. We like him."God demands, "If you don't send him to me immediately, I'll sue!"The Devil laughs. "Where are You going to get a lawyer?"
Selected Comments from Last Week
Each week we ask our members and guests to share their thoughts about the program and the meeting. Last week's program by Eve Dolkart about musicians in Honduras was about empowering women entrepreneurs in Honduras through the non-profit, Adelante Foundation.
From Rotarian Gene Tognetti, member of our Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley Eve- WOW, I am truly amazed about the breadth and depth of Adelante! I'm so impressed about how you extend needed services from microfinance to health care and even providing for college education for some of the young ones....fantastic... and the Google Hangout video flew by! Keep up the great work!
From Rotarian Keith Marsh, member of our Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley Hardeep: Great to have you in the club. Eve: Loved to hear about Adelante and its microfinance programs. They are a great way to kick start the rural economies in these more impoverished countries. As usual, Lisa's Tidbit rocks.
From Rotarian Rushton Hurley, president of our Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley Eve, I hope the work you and Adelante are doing will inspire others around the world to make things happen wherever needed. Great job bringing light and possibilities to those who might not have believed in their futures!
From Rotarian Hardeep Kaur Singh, member of our Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley Thanks for the warm welcome! I'm so excited to be part of this great club!Eve, it was great to hear about Adelante. I'm really impressed by the programs that are offered. I'm sure Rotary Clubs all over would love to hear about this foundation as well!
From Rotarian Mahmood Khan, member of our Rotary eClub of Silicon Valley Eve, Adelante is a great grass root program, lift people out of poverty while empowering them. Women in particular are really the key to lead the effort at a local level. Lending to women has been proven to be successful and pioneered by Grameen Bank and Grameen Foundation. The power of micro-lending when well managed, by people like you, has an incredible impact. The program has many deep implications - education, self sustaining, building the community from inside out ... all the points you raised and has a very low risk. What can be more saintly than breaking the cycle of poverty and uplifting the community with dignity. This is a fantastic initiative. Thank you for taking the lead in Honduras and sharing this with us.
From guest Nathan Gildart, our guest speaker from our July 20th meeting on Music Programs Great work Eve. As a teacher at a Catholic girls' school Adelante resonates with our mission and ethos. That Adelante is addressing some of the causes of poverty is fundamental. Improving health and education is key, and great to see as part of your five types of loans. That the women receiving the loans are given the opportunity to help themselves while maintaining a sense of self-worth is critical. I think another major hurdle is getting more women in positions of government and business leadership (which is also shamefully lagging in industrialized nations), and hence decision-making power. With such a monumental task I'm wondering if you partner with other NPOs focused in specific areas such as health and education. (though likely to be difficult). On a final note, addressing Rushton's comments on internet / device accessibility. Back in the 1990s when studying Latin American debt financing something that struck me was the lack of electricity in the region. Access to consistent and affordable electricity is possibly another challenge to accessing information, let alone access to devices. The tools don't work without power. On this line, has Adelante developed a program in which the clients can drop by an office, or some local 'place', and access devices to research, for example, agricultural techniques in Spanish? I'm sure some NPOs could have (or develop) a video series of 'how to' or even online lessons in reading and writing. Just ideas as I ramble on here. :D Wonderful work you are doing!
From guest Mary Carroll of the Rotary Club of Dunedin North (Florida) via email This was my first exposure to an eClub meeting, and it was a positive. Our daughter and son-in-law are Stanford alums, now living in LA, so clicking into your club provided some nostalgia, as well as a very interesting program. Your interview techniques added to Eve's presentation. Our club is working on a Global Grant for a program in Belize at this time. Many of the issues Eve addressed affect Belize, as well as Honduras. Good to see how the Foundation is addressing needs. Thanks again.
This Week's Program
Rotary Membership: Sharing Your Rotary Passion by Kristi Govertsen
This week our guest speaker is Kristi Govertsen, a Portland Rotarian and professional motivational speaker.Kristi Govertsen is an internationally sought after speaker and best-selling author from Missoula, Montana. As an one-time dance instructor, a long-time math teacher, short-time laughter yoga leader, and lifetime cookie lover, Kristi has gained a popular following amongst her fans as a goal maker and cookie baker.Kristi often speaks at Rotary conferences and seminars about membership in Rotary. Best known as a "Rotary Nerd," it is our honor to have Kristi join us for this week's program on Rotary Membership: Sharing Your Rotary Passion.
Thanks for joining us!You can connect with Kristi via her Facebook Page here or via email at kristi@kristigovertsen.com.Don't forget to fill out the attendance form below so that we can record you've attended this week's meeting. For Rotarian guests, this is how you get an email sent to you confirming you have attended this meeting. (Great to send to your club secretary for proof of makeup completion!)We also strongly encourage you to leave a comment below in the DISQUS section. You can log in with any of your popular social media accounts, or create a free DISQUS account. Tell us what you liked or learned during this week's meeting, or even ask Kristi a question about Rotary membership!
