President Todd Nicholson called our August 31st meeting to order at 12:15 pm thanking scribe Dave Dominick, welcome greeters of Sherry Howe and Laura Nichols-Endres and tech team PDG Ken Crabb and David Wolfgram.
Nancy Brady provided an inspirational minute which included the quote from Hans Rosling “Think about the world. War, violence, natural disasters, man-made disasters, corruption. Things are bad, and it feels like they are getting worse, right? The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer; and the number of poor just keeps increasing.; and we will soon run out of resources unless we do something drastic. At least that’s the picture that most Westerners see in the media and carry around in their heads. I call it overdramatic worldview. It’s stressful and misleading. In fact, the vast majority of the world’s population lives somewhere in the middle of the income scale.. Perhaps they are not what we think of as middle class, but they are not living in the extreme poverty. Their girls go to school, their children get vaccinated, they live in two-child families, and they want to go abroad on holiday, not as refugees. Step-by-step, year-by-year, the world is improving. Not on every single measure every single year, but as a rule. Though the world faces huge challenges, we have made tremendous progress. This is the fact-based worldview.”
The Four-Way Test was led by Nancy Brady.
We had a visiting Rotarian from California and several guests which included Concordia’s University President and Metropolitan State College Vice President.
Rita Dibble presented an overview of Club 10’s Global Projects and Awards Team.
Carolyn Will introduced our program speaker David Benke, from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. David highlighted the Resource Management Assistance Program. The metro area is seeing a growing trash problem where 1.3 million of waste is generated annually with ½ of the waste being recycled. The goal of the waste management program is to take less trash to the landfill and find ways to reduce, reuse, recycle, compose or convert to energy.
David encourage club members to reduce waste, and find ways to rent verses owning products. Ways to reduce waste include reducing food waste, donate items to Goodwill or Salvation Army, host your own swap party, repair items before throwing them out for trash and recyle.
Club announcements include the upcoming 501 Inspirational Lounge on September 7th and our Signature luncheon on September 14th. Happy Dollars shared by Dana Bruce and the Hartfords.
