Stories

 

Club president Teresa Williams (center) presents a check to Rotary Past District Governor Jeff Lichty and his Mary Stone for the ShelterBox USA Program. Shelter Box is an international effort started by a Rotary club in Cornwall, England which sends storage boxes containing a tent and essential materials to disaster sites throughout the world. This is one of the many international and local humanitarian projects sponsored by our club.

 

Here's what's in one box, shelter, lighting, cooking and first aid materials to support a family until permanent housing can be provided.For more information on ShelterBox, including how it is supporting the relief effort in Gaza:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Win big and help our community at the same time!
 

$5,000 cash First Prize + Five additional $200 Prizes
 

 

Only 300 tickets will be sold and 100% of the profits will be used for Rotary and associated nonprofit community organizations. Ticket buyers and their guests are welcome to join us live at the Redwood, doors open at 6:00, order drinks and food from the menu. You do not need to be present to win. Online ticket buyers will  be emailed their drawing number.

 

Community Nonprofits We Help
 

International Projects We Help

Worldwide Elimination of Polio - Shelter Box Emergency Housing - Clean Water in Haiti

 

 

The Genesee Valley Rotary Club, founded in 1977, is one of 35,000 Rotary clubs in 200 countries in every corner of the world. Our club, like every other, is made up of individuals who work towards making their communities a better place and look upon working with other fellow Rotarians throughout the world to bring peace through service.

 

Our club of 40+ members meets weekly at Tuesday noon at the Redwood Steakhouse for lunch, fellowship, to discuss upcoming projects and to be informed by an invited guest speaker.

 

We partner with other local non profits to help both financially and with hands-on support.  Some of our partner organizations include:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The club recently adopted a new system for drawing 50-50 winners with an eye toward increasing weekly attendance. As always, the 50% of donations not given as prizes will be applied to a club literacy project. The change is that when purchasing a $2.00 chance ticket, the buyer will put his or her name on the ticket before placing it in the barrel. As before, three tickets will be drawn each week and owners of drawn tickets will have a chance to pick the joker out of a deck of cards.

 

The new twist is that the tickets not drawn will not  be discarded, they will stay in the barrel to be eligible for the drawing in future weeks. The catch is that the person must be present to win and, if not present, the ticket is discarded. Thus, the members with the greatest chances of winning are the ones who attend every week.

Speaker chairs for the Rotary year beginning 1 July 2019 and ending 30 June 2020. If you are viewing this chart as a potential speaker and would like to get on the schedule, please contact Club Services Chair Tom Svitkovich.

 

Club Rotary Foundation Chair Dennis presented Rotarian Tom Svitkovich with his Paul Harris + 4 pin. Tom, besides his generous giving to Rotary's Foundation, is a real workhorse for the club and the community. He is a past club President and currently serves as the annual Speakers Chair. Retired as Superintendent of the Genesee Intermediate School District, he serves on several community boards and actively participates in all club charitable and fundraising activities. Congratulations Tom and thank you for all you do for Rotary.

 

For readers who may not know the significance of this, the Rotary Foundation is the funding arm of all of our humanitarian work throughout the world and its primary source of funding is our own members. When a Rotarian donates a $1,000 to the foundation, she or he is given an acknowledgement pin and the distinction of being called a "Paul Harris Fellow". Additional $1,000 gifts add sapphires to that pin and today Past President Tom was awarded with a pin with 4 sapphires on it.

Today we heard from Powers Catholic High School's teacher Stacy Turczyn, who coordinates the Powers Interact Club and has been a long time supporter of both Rotary and her kids at Powers. She joined the faculty in 2007 as an English teacher after graduating from Michigan State. She soon found her students wanted to form some kind of club to do community service so she began to explore their options. She and the students investigated organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and discovered that high school students options were limited. After looking at a number of options they decided to form their own in-school club.

 

Coincidentally, GVR Rotarian Dennis Matthew, whose daughter was a student at Powers, approached her with the idea that our club would be interested in sponsoring a Rotary Interact Club and she immediately saw that it would be a perfect fit for the desire of the students to do good work in their community and in the world. The Powers High Interact Club was chartered in 2008.

 

The club has since grown to more that 100 members and students continue to do worthwhile humanitarian work both in our community as well as several international projects. Stacy noted a number of the club's accomplishments over the past 11 years including:

The hard work and fun shared by the Powers Interact Club has had significant positive impact on both those people who have received their help as well as the students themselves. Behind every one of these students are great parents and a caring teachers. Many, many thanks to Stacy Turczyn for a job well done.

This week marks the end of the 2018-19 school year selection of Students of the Month at Swartz Creek, Powers and Carman-Ainsworth high schools. One senior from each school will now be selected for a $1,000 scholarship to be awarded at the annual changeover picnic in June.

 

This month's students from Carman-Ainsworth are shown here, photos of the students from Swartz Creek and Powers will be posted next week.

 

 

 

 

Club President Chad presented a check for $500 to Andrew Heney toward the Global Village Ministries program which sponsors the Omalaika Home in Kenya which shelters and educates girls. Currently 37 girls are cared for by the program as well as many more children come to the home for health and dental care. The money, which will be used to provide books for the school, comes from our club's literacy fund. Our 50/50 game and "happy bucks" donations all go toward the literacy fund.

On April 9th of this year the club held an evening during which Rotarians had an opportunity to honor friends and family who have made significant contributions to making their communities a better place.

 

The vehicle for honoring these people was to bestow upon them the Paul Harris Fellowship (PHF), Rotary's recognition named after the organization's founder, Paul Harris. When a Rotarian donates $1,000 to our private foundation which funds our international humanitarian work, she or he is recognized with a PHF, a lapel pin and a certificate. The donor also has the opportunity to honor another person and in our club, seven Rotarians qualified for this opportunity and most of the honorees were able to join us for the evening.

 

We owe a debt of gratitude to the Rotarians and the honorees who have given of their time and treasure to help others and will surely go on to serve in the future.

 

Bake Fresh Friday is an annual cooperative training program, the brainchild of Rotarian Sharon Fouts, which brings together Rotarians, culinary school students from Mott Community College and residents of the Carriage Town Ministries homeless shelter.  With support through a Rotary District Grant, residents are taught the art of baking.