Happy Summer & Happy New Year!
The Rotary year starts July 1, so we have a lot of new things going on each summer. We get new leadership at the club, district and international level and have a new set of objectives to focus on for the next 365 days!
Our club welcomes new president Meg VanPatten. She is the head librarian at the Baldwinsville Public Library and has been in our club for four and a half years, leading us with The B'ville Big Chill and taking part on the board for a couple of years. Meg has been active in our community for many, many years and brings a new perspective on how we can work with other organizations to best address the needs of beautiful Baldwinsville. It should be a great year!
The Rotary year starts July 1, so we have a lot of new things going on each summer. We get new leadership at the club, district and international level and have a new set of objectives to focus on for the next 365 days!
Our club welcomes new president Meg VanPatten. She is the head librarian at the Baldwinsville Public Library and has been in our club for four and a half years, leading us with The B'ville Big Chill and taking part on the board for a couple of years. Meg has been active in our community for many, many years and brings a new perspective on how we can work with other organizations to best address the needs of beautiful Baldwinsville. It should be a great year!
We are also very proud that this year's District Governor, who oversees 43 clubs in CNY and the Mohawk Valley, is our very own Marv Joslyn. Marv has been a Rotarians for ten years and has been in training for this position for four! He was an innovator when he led our club, establishing our Tuesday evening meeting and growing membership by double digits. The theme for the new Rotary year is "Be The Inspiration," and Marv has many ideas up his sleeve for how we can inspire by being a source of kindness and peace in a tumultuous world. He is reinstating the Passport to Service program, that encourages members to visit other club's events and branch out, and he is introducing Acts of Kindness, to promote spreading joy in our areas of District 7150. He is also planning an awesome celebration in Lake Placid for May 3-5, 2019. Congratulations to Marv - he has the full support of his club, as always!
Finally, we welcome Rotary International President Barry Rassin from the Rotary Club of the Bahamas. Barry stepped in after the unexpected passing of Rotary International President Elect Sam Owori last summer and has turned what was a sad situation into a big positive for our organization. He brings great energy to his theme "Be The Inspiration," and a touch of the Bahamas in his beautiful wave in the logo. With 113 years of Rotary under our belt, Barry has a legacy to create for himself, typically accomplished with the Presidential Citation - an outline of goals that reflect the passions of the current RI President. Barry included goals that will engage Rotary alumni - people who first experienced Rotary through a youth program like Youth Exchange, Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) or Interact (Rotary for high school students). These are prime targets for potential Rotary Club memberships since they have already seen the good works of our organization. He also wants to grow membership through establishing new clubs in communities that currently have no club or where there's potential to add a second one, as well as through sponsoring Interact and Rotaract (Rotary for college students) Clubs in our districts.
In Baldwinsville, we have a lot to look forward to. We've experienced several straight years of membership growth, with many active and inspiring members ready to put Service Above Self. For the summer, we are working on a picnic that will provide a free meal to senior citizens in our community on July 25th, we will hear from students returning from a year of studying abroad about their life-changing experiences in August and we will get to host the incoming Youth Exchange students during their orientation in early September. We are currently re-imagining our annual 5K run/walk to raise money for the Baldwinsville Community Food Pantry too! If you are at all considering joining an organization that will give you opportunities to help others, we invite you to visit us at a meeting this summer. We have such a fun group, that laughs a lot when we're together, and we love to add more smiling faces to work side-by-side with us! You can contact the club at bvillerotary1@yahoo.com to arrange for a visit or check out the meeting schedule on this page and just pop in!
