Our Greeter today was Mustafa Jaffer and he did a marvelous job.
President-elect Jeanne Shipe rang the bell at 7:30 A.M. to open the meeting. Jeanne read a prayer from St. Francis of Assisi.
P-E Jeanne began the meeting having the members recite the Five-way Test with the fifth question, “Is it Fun?”
We stood up and recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the U.S.
GUESTS:
Chris Hornaman, Emmaus RC.
And Shirley Randall also was with us.
P-E Jeanne showed photographs from our last meeting including some of Dan Crane, Marlene Ritter, Gwenn Carr and Gary Englehardt. And there were some of the Lowhill Food Pantry volunteers.
SIERRA LEONE UPDATE:
Chris Blechschmidt reported with pictures of work replacing the ceiling in the Principal’s house at Centennial School. He also showed welders preparing security bars for the windows.
LOWHILL FOOD PANTRY:
Volunteers are needed. See schedule in our bulletin. Contact Gloria Zimmerman.
MEET R.I. PRESIDENT IAN RISELEY:
Members may join and meet RI President Riseley on Saturday Aug. 12th in N.J. Contact President Mike.
JOINT RC EVENTS WITH WHITEHALL:
Herb announced that the Whitehall Area RC invites AW Rotarians to participate in two planned events:
1 – Work with Habitat for Humanity on August 5th,
2 – Gourmet shopping via a bus trip to NYC on November 18th.
SCHEDULE:
President Mike announces upcoming events at our meetings and a list of them appears on our website. A list of the appropriate contact information appears each week in the A-W bulletin.
THURSDAY EVENING MEETING:
TOMORROW, July 27th -- a Happy Hour and business meeting at the Holiday Inn starting at 5:30 P.M. Bring your guests.
ANNUAL AWRC PICNIC:
Sue Weber announced that the AWRC annual Picnic will be held at the Webers’ farm in Vera Cruz on Sunday August 13th starting at 4:00 P.M. A signup sheet is going around, and as usual AW attendees are asked to bring food or drink to share if possible.
AWRC ANNUAL SERVICE AWARD:
Chuck Ehninger now is accepting nominations for the Fall 2017 award through September 30th.
ROTARY LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE (RLI):
Registration is open now for the September 16th training at DeSales. See separate article. P-E Jeanne recommends this highly for all. NOTE, your registration fee will be reimbursed to you in full by our RC.
NEXT WEEK:
Our Greeter will be Jeff Kistler and the program will be President Mike Gschwendtner Sharing His Vision for 2017-1018!
P-E Jeanne introduced our “Entertainment chair”, S-a-A, Mitch Huston by saying “Hereeeees Mitch!”
LUCK OF THE DRAW:
Our Sergeant-at-Arms, Mitch Huston, conducted the raffle drawings.
The two very special bags of things door prizes donated by Mustafa Jaffer were won by Dale Heffner and Halyna Stegura.
The $10 pot of the 50:50 was not won by Donna Beach’s ticket.
HAPPY DOLLARS:
Halyna Stegura reports that daughter Christina and her bicycle are in Yellowstone Park. She will proceed to Denver and take a train home --- in time for her trip to The Ukraine.
Chris Hornaman reported on an Emmaus RC Grant that takes him, wife DGE Cindy, and two teachers to Zambia this Saturday. They each have 200 lb. bags of things for the students.
Jeanne Shipe mentioned her late husband, Gary’s birthday was last week. Jeanne also mentioned attending a “Fire Walk” with 14,000 people at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ last week. Yes, she did walk on hot coals unharmed.
Chris Blechschmidt is happy to have his wife and daughter back home from Iceland. His daughter is ready now to go back.
Sue Weber is happy that she, Bill and Sally and Jerry Frank spent two days exploring Longwood Gardens and the Wyeth Museum.
PROGRAM:
Our program today was Ankita Shastri, a member of Chemists Without Borders. She discussed the issue of Arsenic Contamination in Drinking Water in Bangladesh.
Ankita is from Orefield, and she attended Parkland H.S. She received an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Boston University. and in 2016 she earned a PhD in Chemistry from Harvard University.
From their website, “Chemists Without Borders solves humanitarian problems by mobilizing the resources and expertise of the global chemistry community and its networks.
“The most common problems include poor water quality, maldistribution of medicines and vaccines, and lack of chemical education. Chemists Without Borders focuses on duplicating and providing proven solutions. Entrepreneurship is built into our programs as much as possible so that those we help can become more prosperous and help others.
“Recent and current projects include validation of a composite-iron-matrix arsenic-removal water filter, field verification of a low cost, low tech arsenic measurement device, provision of water filters for rural Bangladesh, and designing secondary science lab exercises for Sierra Leone.”
Ankita described the Bangladesh story starting with over a million water wells before the presence of arsenic was detected and its damaging effects on people were known. Arsenic poisoning over a 10 year period can cause skin lesions, cancer, etc.
In the U.S. we limit arsenic in drinking water to a maximum of 10 parts per billion. IN Bangladesh they allow 50 ppb, and the water sources there are as high as 250 ppb. Some 35 to 70 million people in Bangladesh drink this bad water.
Remediation comes in a number of ways. A few years ago they started educating the High School students about the problem, and they tested the water wells serving the schools, some of which also serve the surrounding community. There are 7,000 High Schools there.
One fix is to reposition some of the water wells to draw from an Arsenic free aquifer at a higher or lower stratus. Another fix is to install filters that will take out the arsenic. Test kits are needed and education is a priority.
A Rotary Club in Bangladesh helped bring good water to 2,500 students. Then a RC in Charlotte, NC did a project that helped another 1,500 students. But much more work has to be done. Once there is a good template from the current region, it will be used across the country.
Ankita recommends the chemistswithoutborders.org site for further information. They always are looking for volunteers and for funded projects.
CLOSING:
We closed the meeting by reciting the saying “One profits most who serves best.”
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