Our Greeter today was Marlene Ritter, and she did a marvelous job.
President Mike Gschwendtner rang the bell at 7:30 A.M. to open the meeting. Chuck Ehninger gave a very nice invocation.
President Mike began the meeting having the members recite the Four-way Test. And someone added a fifth question, “Is it Fun?”
We stood up and recited the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the U.S.
GUESTS:
Steve LaPierre, Emmaus RC.
President Mike announced that Amir Famili was approved by the AWRC Board of Directors to serve as our Vice President this Rotary Year. Applause followed.
Mike showed photographs from our last meeting including Don Davis, a retired S-a-A, and past President Dan Crane looking into a box. Then there were our RI Atlanta speakers and two pictures from our last Thursday’s evening Mixer at Eight Oaks Distillery.
SIERRA LEONE UPDATE:
Chris Blechschmidt reported that the work at the Centennial School in Sierra Leone now has the homemade gravel done and the 26 ft. long roof trusses -- hand sawn -- are being built. Some of the roof is on.
LOWHILL FOOD PANTRY:
Volunteers are needed. See schedule in our bulletin. Contact Gloria Zimmerman.
NOTE FROM MIKE G.:
Please send to Mike any pictures you have from the previous week’s activities. They might be featured in the next meeting.
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.
DICTIONARY PROJECT:
We now have co-chairs and some committee members signed up for this year. More committee members are needed.
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:
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.
MEMBERSHIP MINUTE:
Membership Chair, Herb Klotz, pointed at all of us saying we are the most likely people to identify potential new RC members. His definition of an appropriate candidate is “A Leader in the Community with a heart for Service.”
AWRC ANNUAL SERVICE AWARD:
Chuck Ehninger reminded us that recipients are non-Rotarians, and may be individuals or businesses. He 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.
NEXT WEEK:
Our Greeter will be Mustafa Jaffer and the program will. Be Ankita Shastri, Chemists Without Borders : Addressing Arsenic Contamination in Drinking Water in Bangladesh.
President Mike introduced our “Entertainment chair”, S-a-A, Mitch Huston, Mitch has another new approach to gather dollar donations. Today he called for any of us who feel guilty of anything to pay a dollar. President Mike did so for forgetting to announce that Amir Famili is our new VP.
LUCK OF THE DRAW:
Our Sergeant-at-Arms, Mitch Huston, conducted the raffle drawings.
The door prize donated by Marlene Ritter was won by Chris Blechschmidt.
The $130 pot of the 50:50 was won Herb Klotz’s ticket. There were but 2 marbles left in the bag.
HAPPY DOLLARS:
Dale Heffner is happy to report that his son-in-law Devon has completed his airborne military training successfully.
Gary Englehardt is happy that Amir is our new VP.
Herb Klotz is happy that he and Ronnee have their 8 year old grandson, Nathan, visiting this week.
Sue Weber is happy as she stood in the peace and quiet this morning at home, and thanks God.
And Sue complimented Mustafa Jaffer for his son’s recent award.
Mitch noted that Gary Englehardt is wearing very colorful socks this morning.
Bob Gordon is happy to have been interviewed on TV CH 69 about Psychopaths.
PROGRAM:
Our program today was Eli Pabon, General Manager of Amazon talking about their North American Fulfillment Center especially ABE2. Eli was born in El Paso, TX, and attended the U.S. Naval Academy through 2000, and then served 5 years in the U.S. Navy.
Eli returned to El Paso and managed over 450 employees, and also earned a Master’s Degree. In September of 2012 he joined Amazon.
Eli is not new to AWRC. For the past few years he has attended our annual Scholarship awards and on behalf of Amazon presented each winner with a new Kindle. He really enjoys working with the High School students.
Amazon have many workers across the country; 11,000 of them are in PA. There are three Fulfillment Centers in the Lehigh Valley. Two are in Breinigsville, and one is in Easton. The designations tell folks the nearest airport, e.g. ABE2.
The Easton FC is huge. It houses “non-sortable” items such as furniture and appliances.
Eli explained that Amazon sometimes gets a “Bad Rap” as a company that hurts small businesses. In fact that is not justified. Amazon work to start new small businesses. And they in different ways, support about 36,000 charities.
Charities can sign up as part of Amazon’s SMILE program. For example, a RC can register and a member can designate donations to the RC based on ½ % of the order selling price. Eli has to confirm this.
Eli showed us a video all about Amazon “PRIME” day which was held on July 11th. For 30 hours worldwide they signed up thousands of new Prime members and sold about One Billion Dollars of goods, e.g. over 200,000 dresses. This was 60% more than last year.
Eli says that Amazon is a good corporate citizen. They are very conscious of environmental issues. They consume a great deal of electricity, and recently installed solar generating equipment in Texas.
They also work with manufacturers to determine the best and least amount of packaging materials. And again this year they will sponsor the national Warrior Games.
Eli said we can go to amazon.com/atabout and find all kinds of things about the company and by states. When asked about conducting tours of a Fulfillment Center, Eli said the one nearest the Lehigh Valley is in Delaware. We asked him to try to get a group of AW Rotarians into ABE2.
CLOSING:
We closed the meeting by reciting the saying “One profits most who serves best.”
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