Greetings Rotaractors and Friends of Rotaract,
Hope everyone has been doing well. As many of you know, July 1st marked the end of another Rotaract year and the beginning of a new one. I wanted to share with you some highlights of things that our club accomplished – and to say thank you.
On first thought, it’s pretty clear this past year turned out much differently than we all originally planned…due to COVID-19 and it’s effects on our world and our lives these past few months. However, even with those limitations we should take pride in what we were able to do – despite the circumstances we were still able to put in a lot of support for others, volunteer, and have quite a lot of fun – as always!
Here are some highlights which I am particularly proud of this Club accomplishing:
- Our club hosted 12 volunteering opportunities with 12 different organizations, resulting in approximately 230 hours of volunteering impact on the community – that includes our first ever ‘virtual’ volunteering event!
- We held a fundraiser and contributed to an international service project (in Guatemala) for the first time since 2017!
- Our members organized several interesting projects; you can read about some of them here:
(Speaking of which – we also launched a new website!)
- We added more opportunities for leadership: new committees which any member can participate in to contribute ideas (63% of members have participated in at least one Team meeting this year)
- A group of people from our club attended “Rotary Day at the United Nations” in New York last November, and also another service trip group went down to Guatemala with Milwaukee Rotary!
- Some Rotaract members gained new opportunities for serving on non-profits’ Boards of Directors (thanks to Rotary)
- We had new opportunities to meet Rotaractors from around the world: Guatemala, Colombia, and more.
- Our group hosted many socials, dinners, and other fun activities for people to do things together (including some new ideas – like virtual events and “support local” community campaign weeks)
I’m very grateful for people’s ideas, support, time and passion over the past year. So many of these events and initiatives would not have happened had someone not stepped up and been there to contribute their time, or their ideas. In particular I would like to thank those who served as Team leads or on the Board for their service: Damian, Hannah, Jacob, Jessica, Kathleen, McKenna, Nina, Paige, Patrick, and Renato. It was a pleasure to work with all of you on making so many ideas a reality.
Wish you all a lovely summer – hope to see you all again soon.
Yours in service,
Mark Ruedinger, Past President