Today was a Zoom meeting with 31 people on line. After some conversations President Ralph Witcher opened the meeting at 7:30 A.M.
GUEST ON LINE:
Patricia Mulqueen, guest of the club:
HAPPY DOLLARS AND COMMENTS:
Our guest speaker, Roslyn, was the first on line this morning.
Ron Coleman, the Hat Cat, was eating a bowl of Cheerios, since we always hold breakfast meetings.
Marlene Heller’s background was her Israeli desert scene.
Ernie and Sandi Boll are back in the area for the Summer.
Gwenn Carr and Gary Englehardt called in from their N.J. home where they now have a permit -- after 3 years of effort -- to build a garage. The rules are that the garage has to be on pilings to survive a hurricane.
Pres. Ralph noted that Herb “The Mountain Man” is back.
Halyna Stegura is happy that when she finally got to be with her 2 year old granddaughter, she got a big hug.
Katrina Sundstrom is happy that she got to hug her parents recently.
Bill Palmer is happy that as of 3-31 the YTD new wild Polio virus cases in the world are ONE in Afghanistan, and ONE in Pakistan. This is fantastic.
Herb Klotz is happy that he finally has completed the entire Appalachian Trail 2,200 mile hike with his recent hike. The AWRC sponsors contributed $3,800 to TRF Annual Fund.
Herb also got a surprise announcement that our District 7430 has been awarded an RI Presidential Citation for RY 2020-21. Only 10% of districts earned that. One requirement was for a district to have over 50% of its RCs receive the Club citation -- D7430 had 75% of RCs do that!
Pres. Ralph said that he is proud of AWRC.
Amir Famili got his chicken coop last week but could not find two chickens to buy. So he went to Lancaster and got 2 chickens and brought them home. The next morning he had two fresh eggs!
Marlene Heller two weeks ago Sunday had a very special zoom meeting with family and with friends they had not seen in 50 years.
Patti Mulqueen is happy that her second granddaughter will be baptized this weekend.
CELEBRATION DATES:
Pres. Ralph displayed the list of April members and their celebration dates. We applauded.
OPENING:
Pres. Ralph gave a very nice invocation. Then he led us in the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. Ralph said that he likes the “Quote of the Week” in the last bulletin.
WELCOME GUESTS:
Chair Tom Friday extended a welcome to our guests on line with us today. He encourages us all to invite guests to join our meetings.
Pres. Ralph again said “The world needs more Rotarians:. He played a video of “What is Rotary?” This included the “Six Areas of Focus” and The 4 Way Test.
FOUR WAY TEST:
Pres. Ralph showed a musical video and then Marlene Heller read the four test items.
Marlene went on to say that it was a good thing that SHE did not sing the Four Way Test story. It would not have been fair nor beneficial to all concerned.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The STEM YEA program update is a separate article.
The virtual New Member Orientation was held yesterday. The next one will be in June.
Habitat for Humanity still needs volunteer painters on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Herb Klotz will do a program for us in June about his Trail Hike.
The Tri-District Conference is comin April 29th.
The new Book Club is starting on Saturday with Nick Millward leading a discussion about the Green Eyed Llama.
Jean Masiko needs volunteers for the Kingdom Life Food Center distribution on Saturday April 24.
YOUR SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES:
Service Chair, Gail Micca, asks that you take a look at this section on the left side of this bulletin. New ones:
Highway Clean up: Saturday April 24, 7:30 am contact Gail Micca presidentelect@allentownwestrotary.org
Painting project at Lehigh Valley Zoo, TBD
STATUS OF MORNING MEETINGS:
The AWRC B.O.D. has suspended all AWRC face-to-face meetings until further notice. Zoom meetings are now scheduled for each Wednesday at 7:30 A.M.
NEXT MORNING MEETING:
Wednesday April 14, 2021 starting at 7:30 a.m. We will use Zoom to meet. Our program will be Marty Peak Helman, Peace Initiative Committee Chr. discussing The history of Rotary's work promoting Peace around the World
STATUS OF THURSDAY EVENING MEETING:
No Thursday evening meetings are planned until after the pandemic..
PROGRAM:
Pres. Ralph Witcher introduced Rosyln Kubo, Executive Director, Family Promise (Lehigh Valley) to provide an overview of Family Promise. He said that she is a ‘Mover and a Shaker.”
Roslyn began her career working as the office manager of several local Lutheran churches including Holy Spirit Lutheran Church in Emmaus, Christ Lutheran of Lower Saucon, and Christ Lutheran Church in Hellertown. She is excited to build on this experience by working with local congregations who dedicate their time to Family Promise.
More recently, Roslyn worked for Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley where she developed a passion for helping families who are experiencing homelessness. As the Counselor at Ferry Street Apartments in Easton, a transitional housing program, Roslyn was responsible for intake, needs assessment, and case management. In this role, she met with the other staff of the Sixth Street Shelter in Allentown on a weekly basis. She assisted shelter programs with special projects including coordination of holiday gifts, ordering for the food pantry, and creating a community garden.
Roslyn is a single Mom who raised three amazing children: Alycia, Austin, and Jeremy–forever 22. Roslyn is also the Gramsey to two high spirited grandchildren, Brantley and Tara.
Family Promise of Lehigh Valley is a non-profit 501(c)3 affiliate of the National Family Promise Organization, which assists children experiencing homelessness and their families. The national organization is made up of individual affiliates, which are regionally-based to allow for collaboration with existing services within the community. On the local level, we are an ever growing group of individual volunteers and staff looking to act out the mission through our time, our talents, and our service.
Their mission is to help families who are in need and demonstrate the ability to benefit from assistance provided by Family Promise. The mission is carried out by a network of congregations and other community resources working together to meet the immediate, basic needs of displaced families and assist them to build patterns that will bring long-term stability.
Roslyn said that she is pleased to be here. She said that they had just completed a live auction fundraiser.
She showed part of a video as an introduction. It stopped with a picture of their Care Center at 1346 Hamilton St. in Allentown.
Roslyn said that children deserve to have a stable home. She said that in 2009 only 10 U.S. states accounted for 55% of the homeless… .and PA is one of the 10. One out of 30 experience homelessness. It is everywhere, e.g. Parkland SD and even Swain. And infants experience the highest rate of homelessness.
There are 358 families with 1,095 children homeless in the Lehigh Valley. NOTE that anyone can call 211 to seek help in addressing homeless problems. There is a grant program that is supported by United Way. She said that shelters always are full.
Roslyn said that the root cause of homelessness in the Lehigh Valley is the lack of affordable housing. She gave examples of rental costs.
They support 4 families -- and a fifth right now -- using the kindness of Church groups for about 3 months per family. The families move every week to a new volunteer church. They have over 200 volunteers for driving buses and making things happen. And they need more drivers.
During the covid epidemic they have been housing families in hotels, which is costly. They do have some great success stories.
CLOSING:
Pres Ralph led us in the saying “One profits most who serves best.”
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