ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS
Our community grants application has now been posted. It can be downloaded from this website. The deadline for submission is October 1st and the awards ceremony will be December 5th.
The debunking of the president is rescheduled for Thursday August 29th at Santa Cruz Yacht Club at 5:30. We will be dark for the regular meeting that day.
We have scheduled Tues Sept 17th 4:00 at Aptos Seascape to assemble kits for Rising International. These are ”safety bracelets” with information on human trafficking.
Sunday September 15th is the summer fun party at Keith’s at 2:00. To RSVP, sign up at a meeting.
Dagmar announced Sept 20th will be our next beach clean up at Rio del Mar beach. We did a great job last time picking up 25 libs of trash which included a large amount of microplastics.
Al introduced Jim Zenner from Santa Cruz Rotary Club. He spoke to us about their trips to Kenya and India this past year, where they administered polio vaccines and did Rotary ‘water warriors’ projects which involve installation of clean water systems. There will be a trip to Guatemala this next January.
Janet Gluck showed us a video on how the End Polio Now campaign got started. More than 16 million people have been accessed thru this public health achievement. In those areas where it still persists not enough children have been vaccinated, so polio eradication is now the goal.
Jim started with a thanks to Dr. Art Dover who was their doctor for their trip. He said the water warriors are all of us. The work involves 5-6 clubs as well as another district participating in the effort. Together they came up with almost $50,000 across the districts. They want to encourage us to write the grants and do these projects as one of the six Rotary International goals is for water and sanitation. The final goal is to become obsolete.
They aim to complete one installation each year. They can do it for under $30,000.. Their system can take polluted water and turn it into clean water as the problem with water is the emerging countries not so much no water as it is shallow unlined wells. The runoff goes into gray water and kids drink it. Diarrhea kills kids every day. They also deliver education modules when they are there. The water jug has a three stage cleaning station also installed. The Sunspring system is wind and solar powered which is great for off the grid.
They also did some traveling around thru Jaipur and showed us some slides from that aspect of their trip. For more information see H2openDoors.org