Today was a Zoom meeting with 30 people on line. After some conversations President Ralph Witcher opened the meeting at 7:30 A.M.
GUESTS ON LINE:
Michelle Steiner, guest of the club -- and almost a new member; Maria Santacoloma, guest of the club; and Capt. Nick Millward, Rotary Peace Fellowship winner calling in from Japan.
HAPPY DOLLARS and MEMBER NEWS:
Ernie Boll in Arizona gave the weather forecast as 72deg this afternoon there.
Mary Jo Roma, our speaker today, was on very early and heard all of the AW Rotarians’ goings on.
Mitch Huston called in from his car as he was driving to work.
Bob Gordon -- now living in Florida -- reportedly misses us, BUT not our weather.
When asked, Ron Coleman said that he will wear his special Holiday hat soon.
Ron also said that he is recovering nicely from covid19, and Nancy is just a few days behind.
Amir Famili reminds us that we can buy an inexpensive Oxygen level tester to let us know if we have respiratory issues.
Ihor Fedoriw is most pleased that the Pfizer vaccine now is at the Lehigh Valley and the St. Like’s Hospitals. He said that the individual developers of that vaccine are from Turkey and Germany, and now are billionaires.
Ralph Witcher said it is extraordinary how we support one another.
Bill Palmer is extremely happy to report that his grandson, Nathaniel, has passed his Law Bar Exam, and will be practicing Law in Washington, D.C. starting mid-January.
Amir Famili is happy to have Mitch Huston on today.
Mitch Huston is happy -- thanks to Rotary.
Katrina Sundstrom thanks all AW Rotarians for the wonderful continuous support for the Parkland C.A.R.E.S. Food Pantry.
Barbara Kistler has 35 new $25 gift cards she will take to the Lowhill Food Pantry this morning. She has collected 70 so far just in the last two weeks. Good job folks.
Geoff Legg is happy that his doctor daughter, Kim, attended a dinner meeting at the White House last week.
Pres. Ralph gave a very nice invocation. Then he led us in the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S.
CELEBRATION DATES:
Pres. Ralph displayed the list of December members and their celebration dates.
Pres. Ralph again said “The world needs more Rotarians.”
Ralph and Gail agree that there are a lot of Rotarians out there; they just don’t know it yet.
THE FOUR-WAY TEST EXAMPLE:
Pres. Ralph played the musical rendition video of the 4 Way Test.
Marlene Heller asked for volunteers to tell about a recent application of the 4 Way Test in their life.
Gail Micca talked about good will as she updated us on the family that we helped with housing and a car last year. They still have very ill children and the car is no good. LV Honda came up with a great price of $7,500 and now that family has a good car, thanks to Gail.
PARKLAND C.A.R.E.S. UPDATE:
Gail Micca reports: :We were fortunate to receive a bounty of vegetables and fruits from Second Harvest for distribution on Saturday Dec. 12th. Over 200 families were served. Brad, Gail and Ed volunteered with Katrina and her team. We also met two Rotarians from the LV Passport club, Lisa and Frank Petrocelli, who were very helpful too.”
We will need more help next month with shopping and packing the produce. Please let Gail know if you can help gailmicca@gmail.com
AWRC OFFICER NOMINATIONS:
Past Pres. Amir Famili, as Chair of the Nominating Committee, displayed a list of positions and candidates for the 2021-22 RY. This includes Gail Micca as President, John Scott as P-E, and Tom Friday as VP.
When Amir asked for volunteers to take on the Service Chair position, Diana Dunn, Ron Coleman, and Kathy Ott each signed up.
A motion to accept this slate was made by Marlene Heller, and seconded by Bill Palmer. It passed without exception.
HOLIDAY GIVING ACTIONS:
Message from Gail Micca -- “We have some nice opportunities to give during this season. Let me know how you would like to help:
1 - Barb Kistler will be collecting gift cards to be distributed through food pantries. You can simply purchase some giftcards and mail them to her. If you would like to put the card into a holiday greeting card with good wishes/sentiment and include that this is from the Allentown-West Rotary Club, that would be nice too.
You can email Barb or call her for more information:
Mail giftcards to; Barb Kistler, 6086 Ridge Road, New Tripoli, PA 18066.”
2 - Gail Micca will be organizing a Holiday Family Fun Giftbag to be distributed at the Parkland C.A.R.E.S. Food Pantry Drive Through Delivery Saturday, December 12th.
We will be providing 20 complete Holiday bags which will include:
Blanket, Sugar cookie box mix, frosting and popcorn. All the essentials for a family fun night! Approximate value of each bag is $20-25
Ways to get involved with this fun project:
1 - sign up to create some bags with your family and purchase the items on your own
2 - make a donation towards the purchase of these items
3 - Help Gail stuff the bags and make holiday cards to include
4 - come to the pantry delivery on December 12 and hand them out.
Let Gail know how you would like to help.
Both of these projects require a speedy confirmation and
I look forward to your response.
Thanks so much in advance of your generous support.
HOLIDAY GIFT BAGS UPDATE:
Thanks to Brad Maier and his team at State Farm for packing and delivering 20 of the holiday bags for Parkland C.A.R.E.S. Food Pantry. Contents of the packages were donated by Rotarians and included a blanket, popcorn, sugar cookie mix, frosting and a holiday themed cookie cutter. Gift bags and cards were donated by Brad. Great team effort!!
GIFT CARD REPORT:
Barbara Kistler said that after she took the 35 -- $25 gift cards over to the Lowhill Food Pantry at 8:00 AM. she walked into a packed Pantry of goodies for the clients. First of all, there were around 80 trays of cookies all wrapped with a bow from our own Rotarian, Stephanie Fenstermacher at Buttered Crumb Bakery. This has been her gift for some years now.
The ladies were packing up the beautiful bags of oranges brought to them yesterday from Rotary by Amir Famili. Beverly at the Pantry said that the clients are so pleased and excited to get the gift cards. Merry Christmas, neighbors. As Katrina said, it makes us proud to be Rotarians!!
Gail Micca noted that the bag supplier has donated enough bags to cover next year.
HONORARY PAUL HARRIS FELLOW AWARD:
The AWRC honorary PHF award to the Allentown Chief of Police Granitz is now confirmed to take place next week on Tuesday, Dec 22nd at 1:30pm. We will be meeting at the City Hall Bldg 1st Floor (City Council Chamber).
NO 2020 HOLIDAY PARTY ---- BUT:
You can go to our website and click on “Donate” and give your $100 party ticket value to feed some hungry people.
YOUR SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES:
Please take a look at this new section on the left side of this bulletin.
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 December 23rd starting at 7:30 a.m. We will use Zoom to meet. Our program is TBD.
STATUS OF THURSDAY EVENING MEETING:
No Thursday evening meetings are planned until after the pandemic..
PROGRAM:
Pres. Ralph Witcher introduced Mary Jo Roma, President of Virtual Specialist, LLC discussing Best Practice Organizational & Social Media Ideas for Small Businesses in Challenging Times. Ralph said many complimentary things about Mary Jo.
Mary Jo thanked us for this opportunity to speak. She said that she loves learning about all the things that AW Rotarians do to help people.
Mary Jo received her Finance Degree from Penn State University back in 1992. From there, she went on to work for Keystone Savings Bank. In 1996, she left Keystone Savings Bank as the Construction Loan Officer so that she could be at home with her first born son. She decided to reach out to her contacts from the bank to see what she could do for them from home. Once the word spread, she was in business for herself. She enjoy being an Independent Contractor and working with so many different people.
As a Virtual Specialist, she specializes in Web Marketing and Social Media, specifically Constant Contact, Facebook, Linked In, & Twitter. Her goal is to help small businesses with their media visibility. Most small businesses do not have the time to monitor social media. This is where Mary Jo can help. She can take care of this part of your business, while you run the rest.
Mary Jo also helps small businesses with their Accounting. She can take care of your invoicing, collections and day to day tasks on QuickBooks.
Their second child came four years later. Still wanting to work from home to be with their children, Mar Jo formed an LLC and had five clients. The business grew and Mary Jo added other stay-at-home Moms to her staff. Now she has three women workers and herself handling clients, and a woman who is a website designer. Now with the covid19 issue, they were already to work efficiently at home.
Now she is 50 and the younger one is in College. And their older son is working on getting married. So Mary Jo is thinking that as the next generation comes along, she wants to have a thriving business to leave to them.
A majority of their work is Social Media. Businesses are staying alive these days because of Social Media. She said that it is good to share ideas that others can use.
E-mail Marketing is the other part of the business. Here they urge users to try to send out a message at least once each month. Again you should share ideas. Mary Jo said that a second pair of eyes is needed to proof read material before it gets sent out. And you need to ensure that photos to be posted are not copyrighted.
CLOSING:
Pres Ralph led us in the saying “One profits most who serves best.”