The Florenceville Rotary Club recently presented a cheque to Florenceville Elementary School  in support of their COWS Project  (Computers on Wheels). On hand to present the cheque was Lorena Green from the Rotary Club, David Arbeau the PSSC Chair at FES and Cathy Stephenson, Principal at FES. 

Our Reaching Out to Read project started in March 2011. It is held once per month at the local immunization program. Every child that comes to the clinic receives a book. Our volunteers set up a display of books, model reading to the children, help pick an appropriate book, and keep a record of the books given out. We have given 400 books to date.

Reaching Out to Read Co-Chair Susan Lockhart, Volunteers Maria Wybenga, Delores Broad, Kathy Davenport, and Co-Chair Lorena Green at our meeting on November 18, 2013. Not shown is Volunteer Wendy Rae.

District Governor Pat Perry spent the afternoon of September 16 with President Garth Hatheway and Treasurer/Photographer Don Green. They visited several projects that our club has been involved in, including the Dialysis Unit at the Upper Valley Regional Hospital, the bleachers and musical instruments at the Carleton North Senior High School, the Digital sign in Centreville, and the paving stones at the Cenotaph in Centreville.

After these activities, she and ADG Terry Thomas joined the club for our Supper Meeting.
 The District Governor spoke after supper on several topics. First, the Miramichi club is hosting the District Conference September 27-29, a great program has been prepared. There will be many informative presentations including Camp Rotary and a Multi District project for an orphanage in Africa.

The Rotary theme for this year is “Engage Rotary, Change Lives”. One way to engage people is to show what Rotary does and how we have changed the world. She gave several examples relating our club’s work to changes in our communities’ quality of life.

She then spoke on Rotary’s Polio Plus campaign. In 1985, Rotary members committed to eliminating Polio in 20 years. While it has taken longer than 20 years to reach this goal, it is inspiring to see the progress that has been made. In 2007, Rotary teamed with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to continue this initiative and this partnership has been very successful. In January 2012, India was declared polio-free, something the World Health Organization had said would never happen. The World Health Organization also says that Rotary saves the lives of hundreds of thousands of children per year due to the efforts to wipe out polio. It estimates 5 more years to completely eliminate Polio. Polio day is October 19 and Pat encouraged the club to consider a fundraiser to contribute to Polio Plus.

Closer to home, our District 7810 participated in $201,000 worth of world community service – the largest being a water project in the Dominican Republic.

As well, this year the District supported our club with a $2,000 grant for our Scholarship project, supporting literacy. The District contributed $27,711 in grants to support total projects of $65,000 in District 7810.
We were all inspired by Pat’s passion for Rotary and enjoyed her talk immensely.

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