Don Rogers provided an update on the activities of the Community Service Committee. The Committee has supported several important and unique community projects:
- the infant mental health program at the Youville Centre
- a youth employment initiative to teach entrepreneurship skills to high risk youth
- Best Buddies program run by U of Ottawa students who match students to isolated disable individuals
- 2 individuals with severe spinal cord disabilities
- continue to support the very popular Dictionaries for Life program in 4 Ottawa elementary schools
- considering a playground project for an elementary school in a less advantaged area
The Committee is pleased with the diversity of the projects and the community needs they help fill.
Andre Bourdon introduced Keshaw Goel, a student at Lisgar, who won our Club’s Citizenship Award this year. Keshaw outlined the community activities he has been involved with for the Club.
Angela Kelly updated us on the progress and accomplishments of 12 of our past hosted exchange students. They were from Venezuela, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Brazil, France, Hungary, Japan, Austria and Taiwan. What an impressive group. It is obvious this program has very positive impacts on the students.
The International Services Committee provided the following updates:
- Support for the refugee initiative continues to be a preoccupation of the committee. As previously announced, we have submitted the application for a second family (Mohamad's brother, wife and daughter) and we are happy to hear that the application has been accepted by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. We are not sure how long the processing will take, but at least 6 months.
- Our Centennial project continues to progress and we urge members to look at the website for some latest information from the two girls we are supporting.
- We have a good list of prospective projects to support for the current year and the Committee will be making a decision in early February.
- On January 30th, our lunch time speaker will be from the Uxbridge Rotary club, with whom we partnered on a project to combat AIDS in Malawi. This promises to be a very interesting presentation on one of our major past projects and we urge as many members as possible to come out and hear this presentation.
- We are working to re-establish closer ties with the District on IS projects and hope to have more to report on this in the near future.
- President John updated us on his meetings with other area Clubs on how by working together Rotary can have a bigger impact. An example is combining golf tournaments.
- He is also looking for comments on how we as a Club can keep all our members involved.
President John updated us on his meetings with other area Clubs on how by working together Rotary can have a bigger impact. An example is combining golf tournaments.
He is also looking for comments on how we as a Club can keep all our members involved.