High Gear, April 27, 2022

The Rotary Club of
East Hartford
 

High Gear

Volume 76 | Issue 44  / April 20, 2022
 
Our Zoom Meeting began at 11:45 with casual conversation.   At noon, President Sue rang a bell to start our meeting, then led off with the pledge, followed by a heartfelt invocation by President-elect Alex Wisz.  He reminded us to be grateful for all we have, food, clothing, and shelter, and to be thankful we can help those less fortunate.
 
RISE - Literacy for Guatemala
 
Anwar introduced today’s speaker, Christina Eisenberg, informing us about her long relationship with RISE, a Guatemala literacy project, and especially the rewarding experiences supporting middle and high-school scholarship students.  As of now, in addition to 731 RISE Scholars, more than 600 Rotary Clubs are involved, benefitting over 225.500 students through textbook projects, reading programs, and computer centers.  More than 14,000 children use the computer centers each day.  Christie explained how the reading programs help train future teachers, who often go directly from graduating high school to teaching in elementary schools.  She concluded by telling us two impressive “edge of the cliff” stories about girls who had been on the brink of quitting school after sixth grade, but with help from RISE scholarships have gone through high school and beyond, breaking a family history of illiteracy and poverty.  She mentioned various ways of supporting RISE, from having eight people join to give $10/week for a year enabling a child to go to school for a year ($960), or club or individual can give $960 to a one-year scholarship.  Anyone who wants to get involved can text name and email to (859) 429-2776, alternatively check out the website for guatemalaliteracy.org.
[When I checked the website after the meeting, I was led to another site which shows three pages of students currently available to be sponsored.  Here’s that link: https://portal.coeduc.org/sponsor-students ]
 
 
Caring Moments
  • Dan Firestone told us a bit more about his daughter’s slow but steady progress after a stroke.  
  • Sue mentioned how much our club will miss working with Vincent Crawford who has moved across the river to work with CREC.
 
Announcements: 
  • Sue thanked Wes for his help publishing High Gear and also with assistance needed to complete steps toward getting our district grant’s final report submitted.
  • There will be a Board meeting via Zoom, Tuesday, May 3 from 6 to 7 PM.  All members are welcome, though only officers and directors vote on action items.
  • Next week’s meeting will be in person at Goodwin University, Room 311.  Remember to email Guy LaBella by Monday if you will be attending and plan to eat lunch. 
  • Also, if the weather cooperates, at the end of the meeting we will go outside to take a photo with our tree which has been planted with help from Ray Maselek and grounds staff at Goodwin.  Thanks to Bob Buettner for helping identify a tree for us.
 
To see a recording of today’s program, use this link and code—
 
This week’s message from DG  Joanne Alfieri
 
WHAT CAN YOUR $100 CONTRIBUTION TO THE ROTARY FOUNDATION DO?
Your $100 contribution to The Rotary Foundation can help provide textbooks for one elementary school in Zambia, provide a hearing aid for a deaf child in Pakistan, buy de-worming tablets for 112 children in the Philippines, pay for cataract operations for three blind people in India.
 
Submitted by Sue Klock, notetaker for month of April.