Rotary News

President Judy Moore called the meeting to order.

NEW MEMBER INTRODUCTION: Rotarian Chris Shook introduced our newest member Brian Arrra.  Brian was born in Kalamazoo.  After high school, he entered the Navy.  During his time in the military he started attending classes at one of the college near his base.  Eventually, Brian came back to Michigan in hopes of continuing his education. 

He met his wife Tracy and they not only started a business together but they also started their family.  Brian and Tracy have three children, two boys and a girl.  They have a family that is very busy with their church and are involved with civic projects and club.  Brian's company is Arra Insurance Agency, a full service insurance business.

ROTARY MAKES MONITARY DONATIONS:  President Judy presented several monitary awards to local agencies.  A $1,500 donation was made to the Professional Development and Training Center.  Accepting the donation was Becky Pollack.  The money will go towards upgrading office equipment.  PDTC is a licensed propriatary school that provides to individuals who are going back into the workplace or need to get entry level training make themselves more employable.  80% of the graduates find fulltime employment. 

Sue Warner accepted $1,500 for the Kalamazoo Public Libraries, Ready to Read program.  This program prepares children with reading skills before they enter kindergarten.  This presentation gave Ann Rohrbaugh an opportunity to give a quick report on the progress of the Literacy project.  the goal was to provide 200 rotarian volunteer hours to read to children and to donate 600 books to Kalamazoo Communities in Schools.  These books will be given to children.  We are halfway to our goal.

Tony Thompson of the Kalamazoo Trailways project accepted a check for $10,000 for the project.  It will be deposited at the Kalamazoo Community Foundation for use this year.  The donation was made in celebration of the Rotary Centennial.

BLOOD DRIVE: Sam Cupps announced that there will be a blood drive on March 17 (St. Patricks Day) at the Radisson.  On average, there are 25 Rotarians who donate blood.  Sam would like to see those numbers increase.  With the size of the club, it can be done.

PROGRAM:  Pam Kingery introduced guest speaker Sandra Edwards, Professor Emeritus of Occupational Therapy at WMU.  Sandra's program was "Arctic Odessey - Voyage to a Challenging World."  Sandra and her family took this trip along with scientist to the Arctic to see the effects of what some scientists call "global warming."  They traveled to many islands and witnessed the changes in climate and the significant melting of glaciers.  They traveled on ice breakers that had trouble finding ice to break and they were flown over areas where ice no longer exists.  The lack of ice has and will continue to make life difficult for native animals.  Sharks have even been observed in the northern waters. 

Sandra's son reviewed many statistics showing that there are definitely changes taking place.  Scientist seem to all agree that we are heading for an ice age.  These occur naturally about every 100,000 years.  The message was not all gloom and doom.  With changes in the way we generate energy, we can change some of the negatives.  Solutions include greater efficiency in use of power, improvement in how we generate power such as wind, solar and nuclear power and the use of cleaner fossil fuels.