Recorded by John Braun
President Dale Lowe called the meeting to order. Grant Glauser led the pledges and Daryl Benkendorfer gave our invocation of the day. Lillian Aaron led us in saying The Four Way Test. Arnold Garcia served as greeter and Carl Noble introduced our guests and visitors.
We had a Club banner exchange with visiting Rotarian, Eric Dillie, from Livermore Valley Rotary Club in California; then we heard from Tillery Castillo who announced two upcoming Camp Enterprise information sessions and asked for volunteers to serve as Camp Enterprise Chair for 2017-2018.
This was followed by an excellent presentation by Mandy Jones who is Past President Barry Curlee’s great-niece and is a Rotary Youth Exchange student who has recently returned from several months in France.
President Dale then reminded Club members to use Meetup and Facebook to sign in for Club meetings and announced that Perfect Attendance Awards will be presented sometime late in August or early September. He also encouraged members to sign up to volunteer at the Helping Hand Home Back-to-School Splash Bash coming up on Saturday, August 13.
Michael Portman led the Thank Goodness Basket and we heard from Allison Allen (who thanked new member Griffon Ramsey for her involvement with improving our Club’s social media presence), Jim Bryce, Dr. John Fox and Jack Mayo.
After Fellowship time, Past President Ronney Reynolds introduced our speaker and President of the Westlake Rotary Club, David Jessich, who spoke with us about his involvement with one of Rotary’s partner organizations, ShelterBox.
David stated that ShelterBox is often one of the first responders and coordinates with other agencies, both NGO’s and local, to provide service in greatest times of need during largescale worldwide disasters. The individual components of the boxes are flexible and tailored depending on specific needs, situations and environments because not everyone will necessarily require every available part (i.e. no mosquito nets in colder climates).
In just over 15 years ShelterBoxes have been delivered in more than 250 major disasters in over 90 countries. Some examples include: The Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 was the first major disaster and over 22,000 boxes were deployed in the first load; ShelterBox deployed over 25,000 boxes after the Haiti earthquake disaster in 2010, which was 1/4 of ALL shelters provided at the time; the 2013 Philippines Typhoon was the most labor intensive deployment to-date because of the number of islands affected; and more than 15,000 families were served in Nepal in 2015.
ShelterBoxes provide shelter, warmth and dignity in the shape of a green box.