ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS
Today we honored the recipients of our Rotary scholarships Marisol Hernandez, Joshua Michener and Ethan Abelard (see photos below).
We will be passing around a sign-up sheet for people to work in the Rotary booth on the fourth of July (at the world’s shortest parade!).
O’Neill’s Sea Odyssey will be having a celebration next Sunday the 24th at Cowell beach and dedicating the Circle loop to Jack O’Neill. They need volunteers to help. if you can help see Michelle.
Dr. Art spoke to us about international service. He would like to hear from anyone who would like to be involved in an international projects. One is a polio project in India. Project fairs also provide another opportunity.
Win’s debunking is in two weeks here at Aptos Seascape, Thurs the 28th at noon.
Sandra announced that the RYLA barbecue will be that same night (the 28th) at Mission Springs. See Sandra if you wish to share a ride or you can just show up. There is plenty of food.
Our speaker today was Jeremy Loader from Rise Against Hunger which is collaborating to end hunger. He is a local person and joined Rise Against Hunger in April of this year as program manager for the central coast.
Mr. Loader talked about how Rise Against Hunger began 20 years ago and is now expanding from its home in Raleigh North Carolina into California. They will package 10,000,000 meals in California alone. The meals consist of rice soy fortified grain which is very nutritious. They also have 5 international affiliates around the world serving 57 countries. Sixty million meals have been distributed around the world to date.
Mr. Loader noted that of the 7.3 billion people in the world, over 800 million are without easy access to food and that 25,00 kids die every day from malnutrition. They share the goal of the UN to end world hunger by 2030.
They have 4 pathways to addressing world hunger: (1) Growing the movement with more volunteers to package the meals, the vote to end hunger campaign and Mandela day (2) Nourishing lives including meal bags, safety net programs, water sanitation and hygiene and gift in kind aid (3) Empowering communities thru agriculture, home generating initiatives, and microenterprise and (4) Emergency response thru the global emergency relief fund. 10% of the meals are distributed this way.
This was a particularly interesting presentation for us at Capitola Aptos Rotary since Rotary International has been an active partner in this effort packaging more than 30 million meals to date. For more information go to www.riseagainsthunger.org