Unity Water: Drop by drop, we can…
MEETING FOR THE WEEK OF Dec. 9, 2024
This Meeting at a Glance:
Program: Unity Water: Drop by drop, we can…
Speaker: Sarah van Heerden
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 complete the attendance form at the bottom and leave a comment. Enjoy!
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Read and watch the content below in its entirety.
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Message from our President
Welcome our members, fellow Rotarians, friends, and guests. Thanks for joining our weekly meeting!
WEEKLY FUNNY WITH SHAGS
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 Steven "Shags" Shagrin!
The Husband Who Knows
While attending a marriage seminar dealing with communication, Tom and his wife Grace listened to the instructor, "It is essential that husbands and wives know the things that are important to each other."
He addressed the men, "Can you describe your wife's favorite flower?"
Tom, smiling but looking a little nervous, leaned over, touched his wife's arm gently and whispered, "It's self-rising flour, right?"
INSPIRATION
This week's inspirational video is drone footage by Simon Dommett. He provides a visual of the area that includes one of the informal settlements that our speaker Sarah van Heerden discusses in her presentation. In this, you'll see the settlement where they are currently distributing a number of Hippo Rollers, the beautiful waterfall at the settlement's edge, and a commercial area in the town beyond the waterfall where Unity Water (van Heerden's organization) is based.
LEARN SOMETHING NEW
Inflation Explored in Under 3 Minutes
And what does the US Federal Reserve have to do with it?
Club News For Members
We are pleased to announce a new tradition for the eClub of Silicon Valley. We will be adding a new club fundraising project in the Fall/Winter season. This year, our efforts will be for Sanku in Tanzania, Kenya, and other countries in East Africa. As you know, we also support the Walk for Alzheimer’s for our Spring/Summer fundraiser. Please watch this short video to learn more about Sanku.
Hi everyone,
It's the second week of the three-week fall service project, which raises awareness of hunger locally and globally! Last week, we focused on our work to end hidden hunger by supporting the work of Sanku, a particularly impressive nonprofit (here's the recording with its CEO).
This week, we'll look at learning about hunger in our own communities. Your challenge is to find a local organization that works to get food to those in need. Here in Silicon Valley, one of the choices is Second Harvest, which is currently working with companies in the area to provide two million meals to people in our community.
Once you have identified the organization, level up by contacting them to find out what items they need. That is, they probably receive donations of all sorts, and our goal is to be helpful by figuring out which things they don't get enough of. The idea is to take an extra step in our service by both donating and learning more about their work and systems.
We hope you'll also take a picture of yourself taking some of those things to the organization and share them in a reply to this email!
For those who have yet to contribute to the Sanku fundraiser, we hope you'll do so—any amount is helpful and, as you learned last week, has a great impact! Feel free to involve your friends and family, as well!
In service,
Rushton
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PROGRAM: Unity Water: Drop by drop, we can…
SPEAKER: Sarah van Heerden
We bring you a new program every week on innovation, entrepreneurship, and education and how they contribute to service to others.
200 million hours are spent by women and children every day collecting water. UN reports tell how in some countries with crippling water scarcity, girls are spending up to 8 hours a day on the long walk for water. Unity Water is deploying innovative common-sense solutions to reduce the time spent collecting water and to deliver opportunities for sustainable growth and development. By adding the power of technology, the Unity Water GIS team creates vast StoryMaps that chart, not just the stories of each individual, but allow donors, sponsors and the public to see where every cent is spent, while learning more about the communities that have been helped. This is how Unity Water challenges global water enslavement.
Our speaker, Sarah van Heerden, is a creative professional committed to purpose-driven work and ethical storytelling. Drawing on her 16+ years of NGO and media experience, Sarah is the CEO and Co-Founder of The Unity Water Foundation, a movement focused on addressing global water insecurity and providing development opportunities for communities, especially women and youth, by blending common-sense solutions with the opportunities offered by technology.
Sarah believes in the power of NGOs as sustainable investment hubs, and is passionate about realigning the narrative in the NGO space from one of sensationalized despair to one of proactive and empowering citizenship.
She is also the Editor in Chief of the Rotary Africa magazine, where she creatively engages volunteers and aspiring writers to help produce content that resonates with diverse audiences. Sarah has no hobbies as she has yet to learn that she can't save the world, and she keeps volunteering to help on committees and projects which have caught her attention.
Members and guests, please welcome Sarah van Heerden!
For more information: admin@unitywater.life
Rolling with Hope campaign: https://donorbox.org/rolling-with-hope
Website: https://www.unitywater.life
Hippo Hub: https://www.hipporollerusa.org/pages/learning
Our Three Podcast Series
Our main program speakers are available as podcasts in addition to YouTube videos! Each week, they are available on Spotify and Apple podcasts.
Or you can click below for this week’s speaker:
The Weekly Rotarian
Inspiring Solutions
And our original podcast, featuring some of the best of our previous speakers, is still available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts
Development Success Stories
Our third podcast features success stories about economic development from around the world. It is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, or you can click below.
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 http://zoom.siliconvalleyrotary.com/. 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.
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 makeup.
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.
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