August 24, 2017: Alisha Todd, “Work on Parliamentary Systems”. Sue Wakelin will introduce and Al Wakelin will thank our speaker.
Head Table: Our President Linda Bathe, invites, Sue Wakelin, Heather Carr, John Carruthers, Tony Carter, Guy Chadsey and Carolynne Champagne, to join her at the head table.
This Week: We were blessed with two separate and very interesting presentations at our meeting today. The first was by our NGE participant Rodrigo Mohr Hernandez from Mexico who is about one-half of his way through his 3-month exchange here with us experiencing the business of music and theatre arts. The second presentation was an update by Arlene Pol on our club's program "El Aetes" in Sushitoto El Salvador - a program to enhance education in schools by adding theatre and acting skills to school programs.
Rodrigo began his presentation with an illustrated introduction to his home country of Mexico and his home city of Torreon. He chose to show us pictures of some of the most beautiful and significant buildings and places throughout his country His state is Coahuila and his Rotary district is 4110 which covers a large area in North Central Mexico. He is active in his Rotaract club and proud of their flagship project - collecting children's toys and clothes and distributing them to disadvantaged families and orphanages.
He is a big fan of theatre and especially musical theatre. So far he has had the opportunity to volunteer with Stratford Summer Music and he has already seen 10 shows at the Stratford Festival and some musical theatre shows in Toronto.
He is an experienced exchange person, having done a Rotary youth exchange to Taiwan while in high school, a university exchange to Rouen France and now a new generations exchange.
Rodrigo was introduced by Arlene Pol and thanked by Pat Feryn.
Arlene described how the "El Artes" program has progressed and is now producing new leaders able to teach the next generation of children. it is not easy to maintain the funding when the enthusiasm starts to slip and the Stratford Rotary club's support helps to keep it going. The plan going forward is to increase collaboration with other volunteer organizations because adding theatre arts to school programs has many benefits. Arlene pointed out that the whole of society needs to raise the next generation without the old feelings of hate and fighting but rather willingness to share and help and be creative in the arts. It is possible that collaboration could allow this work to expand to more areas beyond this city.
Scribe: Norm Bird
Guests: Today we welcomed: Colleen Devine, John Woollatt and Douglas Brown from Stratford; Shannon Hughes from Meaford, Andre Bartczak from New Hamburg; Laura Pogson from the Festival City club, Jack Groom from London; Tito Hasbian and Koki Herrera from El Salvador
Draw: The draw prize today was donated by Peter Maranger and was won by Angus MacDermid.
Make-ups: No report
August’s Attendance Committee: Bob Gulliford (I/C), Nick Aroutzidis, Jim Hayes, Mike Gruszcynski, Bryan Lapier, Arlene Pol, Steve Monteith, Dan Scarborough, Josef Frank, Norm Bird.
October’s Attendance Committee: Rob Ritz (I/C), Carolyn Blackburn, Peter Roach, Carolyn Champagne, George Schroeder, Doug Thompson, Angus MacDermid, Gary Wreford, Lynn McKone
