Today was a ZOOM meeting and there were 31 of us on line. Dale Heffner said that he now is doing Zoom meetings with his clients all of the time. After 15 minutes of talking amongst ourselves with our Greeter being President Amir Famili, he opened the meeting at 7:45 A.M.
=Pastor Jean Masiko gave a very nice invocation.
GUESTS ON LINE:
Amaris Ramos, LCTI student: Dr. Mark Covelle, LCTI; and Four members of Engineers Without Borders.
Secretary John Scott began the meeting by having the members recite The Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. Flag. Then he led us in reciting the Four Way Test.
Pres. Amir thanks all “first responders” for what they do and asks all to pray for them. And he reminds us that we are people of action.
VOLUNTEERING TO HELP:
Pres. Amir reports that we have volunteer Rotarians willing to help you with grocery shopping or with any other needs you may have. If you need any assistance please feel free to reach out to Amir at 484-431-7741.
MASKS SEWING:
Gail Micca and Marlene Heller have created many protective masks and donated them locally.
ONTELAUNEE PARK WORK:
Dennis Houser says “We had an outdoor work party event scheduled at Ontelaunee Park at 8:30 A.M. on SATURDAY, April 11. See separate article.
LOHILL FOOD PANTRY DONATIONS:
Thanks go to the generosity of our AW Rotarians. We now are able to deliver sixty five, $25 each, Weis market gift cards to the Lowhill food pantry for distribution to their clients.
Pres/ Amir says: “You have truly demonstrated that Rotarians are people of ACTION.” The Lowhill folks thank AW Rotarians.
HELP FOR SMALL BUSINESSES:
Laurie Grube and her Bank are available to help small businesses work through the new government support options. They are very busy now.
AWRC ANNUAL SCHOLARSHIPS:
Dr. Barbara Kistler said that this sub-committee met yesterday and agreed to make individual scholarship awards during our Zoom meetings starting on April 29. On 4-29 Dr. Ann Bieher, President of LCCC will be our speaker, and an LCCC student will receive a scholarship.
MORNING MEETINGS;
President Amir Famili has suspended all AWRC face-to-face meetings until further notice. ZOOM meetings are now scheduled for each Wednesday at 7:30 A.M.
THURSDAY EVENING SCHEDULE:
No meetings for Thursday evening are scheduled yet.
NEXT MORNING MEETING:
Starting at 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday April 22nd. We will use ZOOM to meet together with appropriate distancing. Our program will be Chad Butters discussing Converting the Distillery to the production of hand sanitizers.
STUDENT OF THE MONTH:
We used our ZOOM meeting to recognize Amaris Ramos, a Senior at Lehigh Career and Technical Institute, as Student-of-the-Month of March 2020. Rev. Jeffrey Kistler introduced Amaris and her Mother and conducted the ceremony. Dr. Mark Covelle praised Amaris as a great member of their student body. Amaris thanked AW Rotarians for the recognition.
HAPPY DOLLARS and MEMBER NEWS:
Pres. Amir conducted this part and kept score on who owes how much money. BTW it is $2 for ZOOM happiness.
Bill Palmer is happy that he is receiving many family phone calls checking up on him these days.
Herb Klotz reminds us of his e-mail regarding the TEN Lehigh Valley RCs promoting a much needed BLOOD DRIVE to be held on April 29th. Please donate if you are able.
Herb will be sending an e-mail to all D7430 Rotarians today explaining the new Rotary International effort to get one million volunteers to sign up to become trained Tele-Health or Community Health workers.
Gail Micca said that yesterday they sent 100 Snack Packs to Parkland C.A.R.E.S. FOR DISTRIBUTION.
Sue Weber sadly reports that our Youth Exchange student from Denmark will not be coming because of the virus. The whole Y.E. program might be on hold this year.
Jean Masiko said that volunteers at Kingdom Life Food Pantry served 360 clients via drive-up distribution with safe distancing.
Jean says she needs more volunteers for 9 A.M. this Saturday.
John Scott reports that his foundation working with the SBA have received 195 loan applications totaling about $10 million over the last two weeks.
PROGRAM:
Diana Dunn introduced our speakers Tom Power and Carl Zvanut from Engineers Without Borders (EWB) to provide an update to the recent trips to Sierra Leone to rehabilitate the Hospital there.
Tom and Carl were on two trips to Sierra Leone in February executing a Rotary Global Grant. Each trip included four EWB members. Tom expressed their thanks to AW Rotarians for the great support. This hospital construction project was the largest construction project that this EWB group has ever done. But with all the prep work and many local volunteer workers, these parts are completed.
The official construction project name is:
Matru Hospital Staff Continuing Medical Education and Staff Housing
Sierra Leone is one of the least developed poor countries in the world
● Population – 7,800,000
● Extremely limited postal service
● No public power grid, water, or sewer
● Difficult travel
● No landlines but most have cell phones
● Major Ebola hotspot in 2015
● Mean income - $500/year
● MH Nurse makes about $55-70/month
Health Care In Sierra Leone ---
• Hospitals can’t charge for maternal care.
• Sierra Leone has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world
• Severe Shortage of Doctors (less than 150 in a country of 7.8 Million)
• Approximately 80 Hospitals
• PHUs (Peripheral Healthcare Units) Provide Most Care
• Community Health Officers (CHOs), midwives and nurses provide medical care.
• Skill level of medical professionals is lower post war.
• Very large number of NGOs supporting medical facilities.
• Nearly all hospitals receive outside financial support (UBC still majority of
funding for MH)
Tom showed as plot plan of the hospital site and pointed out the buildings involved. Then he showed a series of photos of the building they fixed before and after, outside and inside. Tom said that the roof trusses were welded steel that involved some local welding students. Our own Chris Blechschmidt and his company designed them.
Grant Components ---
• Housing for Key Health Care Providers
• Continuing Education for Medical Providers
• Training for Administrative staff.
Grant Components ---
• Housing for Key Health Care Providers
• Rehabilitation of International House
• Six individual living quarters
• Three full bathrooms
•On call room for midwives
• Computer/Study station
Grant Components ---
• Continuing Education for Medical Providers
• Training conference room equipped to allow remote
teleconferencing.
• Establishment of a collaborating educational team for
continuing education.
• Partnership with Lehigh Valley Hospital Residency
program.
• Partnership with Cedar Crest Nursing Program
• Medical Journals/Apps
Grant Components ---
• Training for Administrative staff.
• Training in finance and management
• Bo Rotary club members to coordinate.
• Support from Allentown West RC members
Local Support ---
• Cedar Crest College School of Nursing donated nursing
textbooks and agreed to teleconferencing for nursing.
• LVHN donated three Remstar CPAP machines and accessories,
stethoscopes, misc. drains and suction tubing. Respiratory and
medical texts. Also agreed to teleconferencing.
• Medical Journals: Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics, Hunter's
Tropical Medicine and Emerging Infectious Diseases, Numerous
Apps installed.
Carl said that the next project will be a storeroom at the hospital and some training on how to use it. This should happen about a year from now.
CLOSING:
Pres. Amir led us in the saying “One profits most who serves best.”
Photos by Gary Heller
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