Welcome to this week’s meeting of the eClub of the State of Jefferson.

I am Bob Gibson, President of the Rotary eClub of State of Jefferson. Welcome to this week’s meeting.

I hope this finds you well.

Rotary provides an extraordinary opportunity for service. Tuesday morning several of us met via Zoom with a delegation of Rotarians from the Rotary Club of Kharkiv in Ukraine. Their city is under frequent missile attack. Their challenges are staggering. One of their problems is protecting the children of the community from being injured or killed by land mines. They need assistance with signs to warn people of the areas where land mines have been placed. Providing support for their sign project can be scaled to whatever we can manage. We have decided to host a District wide Zoom meeting on September 13. This will be an opportunity to hear firsthand about the challenges they face. Yulia Pavichenko, their Club President, will provide a description of their situation. There will be an opportunity to provide support at that meeting. When this project was first proposed I wasn’t sure it was significant enough. Providing signs seemed so trivial in the face of their problems. I was so wrong. If one of the signs we provide saves a child from being killed or having their leg amputated, it will be worth everything we put into this. I would much rather buy a sign for $3.00 than figure out how to fund a prosthetic limb. There will be more information, as it develops.

Creating opportunities for fellowship remains one of my priorities. I am scheduling another “Coffee Chat” membership meeting for Saturday morning, August 19 at 10:00am PDT. I would like to use that time to discuss our Club Foundation and how it can be a tool for our Club to participate in a variety of service projects and respond to request for support. I am developing an agenda for the meeting. If you have something related to our foundation that you would like to discuss, please let me know.

Also on Tuesday, we had the first half-hour fellowship meeting at 9:00am. It provided an opportunity to visit and get to know each other a little better. Paul Harris, the founder of Rotary, started his meetings out of a need for fellowship. Fellowship is a fundamental value of Rotary. I intend to continue these informal chats each week. I believe you will find that this is a valuable opportunity. I understand schedules are busy and time is precious. I will be sending out the link and we’ll see what happens. I look forward to getting to know each of you better.

Thank you for your interest in our Club and your commitment to “Service above Self.”

Enjoy the meeting.

If you have any questions or comments, I am available. My e-mail address is: bob@bluewaterphoto.net.

email president@StateOfJeffersonRotary.org