Hotel staff was recognized with a holiday bonus for their excellent service throughout the year. Neal welcomed new corporate members Clint Ewell and Rodney Jenkins representing Yavapai College and sponsored by Billie Orr. Clent is Vice President of Finance and Administrative Sevices and Rodney is the new Vice President of Community Affairs.
Great extractions : Val was Sarge and fined everyone who couldn’t remember the official name of the bulletin while looking at the light above his head. Lots of happy bucks for holiday trips and visitors.
Our Speakers: Andy Fraher, Director of Stem Outreach at Embry- Riddle gave us an overview of the STEM Center which contains 20 industry- grade laboratories and supports degrees in astronomy, forensic biology, space physics, wildlife science, and Simulation Science, Gaming and Animation. Andy then introduced Eric Edelman, the new director of the Jim and Linda Lee Planetarium which is the only Arizona planetarium north of Phoenix . Much more than just a planetarium, the facility contains multi-media learning software that can take viewers to the farthest reaches of the known universe. Upcoming community shows at the Planetarium include “The Prescott Winter Night Sky” and “Romance Among the Stars
The year of 2017 marks a prolific 12 months of humanitarian efforts and hands-on projects for Prescott Sunup Rotary. Here’s a look at the year of 2017 in review.
We started off the year in February by participating in the Caborca Polio Vaccinations Project for Rotary District 5495. Together with other Rotary clubs and Caborca Rotary, we went from house to house in rural neighborhoods immunizing children under five against polio, parasites and digestive diseases.
In April we engaged in a massive effort to save a physically challenged woman living alone from losing her house. A massive amount of debris, including two campers, chicken coops, sheds, etc. needed to be removed or the county would take her house. Sunup came to the rescue with chainsaws, axes, sledgehammers and crowbars. After a grueling day of intense labor, we had cleared all the debris, saved her house, and greatly increased her quality of life.
Our club once again came to the rescue of elderly, disabled woman living alone who was being threatened with eviction. The Coalition for Compassion and Justice (CCJ), contacted the club with an appeal to save a woman’s home from being removed from the mobile home park because she was in violation of the park’s paint code. We marshaled the troops, and now Barbara proudly exclaims she has the best looking mobile home in the park.
The Prescott Sunup Rotary Club once again gathered at the Prescott Courthouse Plaza in the early morning hours in August to provide their annual renovation of the All Veterans’ Memorial statue and the surrounding garden, including a general cleanup, landscaping the garden with fresh flowers and plants, as well as sanding, scraping and painting the memorial’s protective boundary.
Sunup Rotary of Prescott began delivering hot, ready to eat meals to the Prescott Area Shelter and Services (PASS) in August, 2017. This is a homeless shelter for females and their children which depends entirely on people like us to provide meals for the residents. On a side note, we also provided homes for their three feral cats!
In Rotary, our diversity is our strength. This idea dates back to the earliest years of our organization, when the classification system was first proposed. The idea behind it was simple: that a club with members who had a wide variety of backgrounds and abilities would be capable of better service than one without.
In the years since, the idea of diversity in Rotary has come to be defined more broadly. We have discovered that a club that truly represents its community is far better able to serve that community effectively. Looking ahead, it is clear how essential diversity will remain in Rotary: not only to strong service today, but to a strong organization in the future.
One of the most pressing aspects of diversity to address in our membership is the age of our members. When you look around at almost any Rotary-event, it becomes immediately obvious that the age range in the room does not promise a sustainable future for our organization. Our membership is near a record high, and we are bringing in new members all the time - yet only a small minority of those members are young enough to have decades of Rotary service ahead of them. To ensure a strong and capable Rotary leadership tomorrow, we need to bring in young and capable members today.
We also cannot discuss diversity in Rotary without addressing the issue of gender. It is difficult to imagine that just three decades ago, women could not join Rotary. Although we have come a long way since then, the legacy of that misguided policy is still with us. Far too many people continue to think of Rotary as an organization only for men, and that idea has had a detrimental effect on both our public image and our membership growth. Today, women make up just over 21 percent of Rotary's membership. While this is certainly a great improvement, we have a long way to go to meet what should be the goal of every club: a gender balance that matches the balance of our world, with as many women in Rotary as men.
Whatever brought each of us to Rotary, we stay because we find value in Rotary membership and believe that our service has value to the world. By building clubs that reflect that world in all its diversity, we will build even more enduring value in Rotary: Making a Difference.
IAN H.S. RISHEY
President, Rotary International
President's Corner
A.J. Sheridan
Good Morning Fellow Sunupians,
So, here we go! Rolling into 2018 with new hopes and resolutions!
Living up to being rollicking Rotarians in our Wicked Good Club!
Wishing you all the best for a Healthy and Happy New Year!
Help Spread Sunshine: When you know of a member's loss or hospitalization, please alert Par Wood at 928-777-0500 ext 207 of the Sunup Sunshine Committee, or email parnisi@msn.com