Your COGs Newsletter Meeting of September 1 (Sep 06, 2022)

Your Red Bank Rotary Club COGs-
October 6, 2022

The Red Bank Rotary Club is thrilled to be installing Alex Niel as our newest member. Alex will share about herself at today's meeting.

Dates to remember:

October 9- Lemonade Stands canceled, volunteers for the Red Bank Porch Fest event are still needed. Report to 15 Hudson Street at 12 PM if interested.

October 12- Florida Hurricane Relief: Last day to bring goods and gift cards to Schwartz Mazda

October 13- Installation of new member Sandra Weingart

October 15- Red Bank Rotary at Lunch Break, 8 am to 12 PM.

October 16- Red Bank CROP Hunger Walk- sign up with Addie to volunteer at the Water Table and/or walk with the Red Bank Rotary Club on our Team! https://events.crophungerwalk.org/2022/team/red-bank-rotary-club

October 19- Popcorn sale begins . See website for details.

October 20- Club social, 5:30 PM Darts at Murphy's Tavern, Rumson, followed by dinner at Val's Tavern, Rumson.

November 15- Club Social at Board and Brush, Red Bank.

Don't forget your annual dues! Pay by check made payable to "Red Bank Rotary" and mail to PO Box 8444, Red Bank, NJ 07701 or online: https://redbankrotary.org/Page/pay-dues-sponsorships-make-donations

Red Bank CROP Hunger Walk, Sunday, October 16

There are Two Ways you can support this community based event to stamp out hunger- pick one or both!

#1 Red Bank Rotary Club is teaming up with our neighboring Tinton Falls Rotary Club to work the 1st Water Station at the Red Bank CROP Hunger Walk. Contact Addie Schmidt for details: addieschmidt@hotmail.com

#2 Sign up to walk and/or solicit donations: details here: https://events.crophungerwalk.org/2022/team/red-bank-rotary-club

Popping Fun Fundraiser Coming October 19

Double Good Pop Corn sale begins October 19. This is an online event is for a limited time. As a Rotarian you will have your own "shop" to share with friends and family. Friends and family will order their choices of this award winning treat, it is shipped directly to them and our Red Bank Rotary Club will earn 50% of all sales for our Rotary Foundation. There are 12 flavors of ultra-premium, made-to-order popcorn which will have your supporters asking you when you’re going to do another Double Good fundraiser. No products to handle or deliver! Look for information in your email, on the Red Bank Rotary Website and on Facebook. The goal of this fundraiser is $1,200. Which means we need to sell $2,500. of popcorn. Here's how to set up your virtual pop corn store.

Third Thursday Social- Thursday, October 20

Help Wanted!- Happy tasks, no pay, tons of gratitude!

Mother's Pantry Lead- Arrange for weekly checks of our 3 pantries, provide refills to Rotarians to use, publicize Pantries within our community, solicit organizations to hold baby supply drives.

Major Fundraiser Event Coordinator- Lead club's annual major fundraising event, the possibilities are endless- raffle, goods and services auction, golf outing, etc. to be scheduled to take place this Spring. With the help of club members you will lead the selection, planning and execution of an event or project to support Rotary service projects, scholarships and mini-grants.

Contact Katie McAdoo if interested!

Ukraine Ambulance Delivery Report

Medford Sunrise Rotary Club – Ukraine ambulance delivery report

On Thursday, August 25^th, club President Tom Monaghan and Past District Governor David Forward flew from Newark Airport to Frankfurt with a large quantity of donated medical supplies.

We arrived in Frankfurt on Friday, August 26^th and were met by Volker Hoffman, President of the Rotary Club of Obernburg, a small town about an hour south of Frankfurt. The Oldenburg Rotary Club was a wonderful partner in the project; they paid for and filled the ambulance with thousands of dollars of medical supplies identified by Ukrainian hospitals as being urgently needed; they had the ambulance checked out mechanically, and they even had a packed lunch for our long road trip!

We set off on a very tedious 7-hour drive across Germany, made more-so by continuous highway construction, and we arrived in Dresden after 6pm where we spent the night.

On Saturday, August 27^th, we wanted an early start for then700 kilometer drive all the way to Rzeszow in southern Poland.

It was not to be a fun day!

First, we had barely hit the road when we realized we had a problem with the brakes. By God’s grace, even though it was a Saturday, we found a full-service auto repair facility only one kilometer away and even with no appointment, they drained the brake fluid and recharged the system for us while we drank LOTS of coffee and waited. Three hours later, we were back on the road, this time in filthy weather, driving through heavy rain and thunderstorms and almost continuous road construction for the entire trip.

We crossed into Poland and refilled the vehicle. As we tried to pull out onto the highway, the vehicle kept stalling. Every single time it would go maybe a foot and then stall out. We were still in the merge lane and realized that this would be incredibly dangerous if we ever got into the actual motorway lane and THEN stalled again with huge trucks barreling down on us unable to stop. After perhaps 20 attempts and as many stalls, we theorized there must be fuel contamination. Our only solution was to back up—for some reason, it didn’t stall in reverse—all the way back down the merge lane and around the corner---DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!!—into a restaurant parking lot. We had no idea where we were or whom to call. We walked back to the fuel station. I will admit, I was praying the entire time! We threw ourselves on the mercy of the gas station manager using her limited English and my Google Translate app. Bear in mind this is now 4:20pm on a Saturday in rural Poland where NOTHING like repair shops open on Sunday. She called multiple mechanics, but most of them were not interested. Then a wonderful young mechanic called Michael said he’d be there in 30 minutes. While we drank yet more coffee, he spent the next 90 minutes draining the entire fuel tank, flushing it out, and then we refilled it—and it ran like a champ!

We didn’t pull into Rzeszow, Poland until midnight, but once again, God had answered our prayers with a miraculous save.

Sunday, August 28^th. We drove down to the Polish-Ukrainian border town of Przemysl. Borys Bodnar of the Lviv Unity Rotary Club and Ihor Savchykevych of the Lviv Rotary Club met us. It was moving to the extreme to hear them say how much ambulances are needed. This one will be delivered within a few days to Kharkiv—one of the most devasted cities in Ukraine, where Russians have made multiple rocket and missile attacks on hospitals, schools and apartment buildings. On a single day recently—June 13^th—Amnesty International’s website headline was “Hundreds killed in relentless Russian shelling in Kharkiv.”

After delivering the ambulance more than 1,000 miles, we took the train to Krakow, Poland.

Monday, August 29^th was our “safety day” in case something went wrong during the trip.

Tuesday, August 30^th, after a 3:30AM departure, we will fly from Krakow through Frankfurt back to Philadelphia

Knowing how “our” ambulance now can potentially save dozens of innocent lives by getting injured civilians to the hospital even before we get back to New Jersey gives us such motivation to do this with a second and maybe even a third ambulance in the next couple of months. We are already within $5,000 of being able to buy the second vehicle! We hope every donor to this great grass-roots campaign feels justifiable pride in making the dream come alive.

An anonymous donor in Medford Sunrise Rotary contributed $1,000 to the Peace Centers program of the Rotary Foundation and in doing so, make Ukrainian President Volodimyr Zelensky a Paul Harris Fellow. Incredibly, nobody had done that previously. Our Rotary friends have contacts in the office of the president and will present the certificate to him.

Thank you, on behalf of the volunteers in Rotary in three countries and four districts for your support.

Tom and David

Media Release: Red Bank Rotary Holds Community Needs Assessment

Red Bank Rotary Club Conducts Community Needs Assessment

On Thursday, June 28, the Rotary Club of Red Bank conducted a workshop for key community stakeholders to explore the most pressing needs of the Red Bank community. The agencies and organizations which participated included the First Baptist Church of Red Bank. JBJ Soul Kitchen, the YMCA of Greater Monmouth County, NJ Department of Human Services, Lunch Break, the Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey, HABCore, the Salvation Army, the Parker Family Clinic, T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center, St. Anthony Parish of Padua/St. Crispin Society, Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Coastal and Northern NJ, Boys and Girls Clubs of Monmouth County and Monmouth Mental Health Association.

Held at the Parish Center of St. Anthony’s Church, the purpose of the 2022 Community Needs Assessment Workshop was to identify current strengths, needs, and ideas for future services in the community. Facilitated by Past Rotary District Governor and Red Bank Rotarian, Chuck Watson, the round robin discussion included needs which were highly prevalent, perhaps stretching the resources of organizations and needs which are unique, often “gap needs”, which may affect less people but can be highly significant.

The 35 leaders listed the needs they see and hear each day when their organizations and agencies provide outreach to the underserved. The list of needs was recorded and will be sorted and distributed by the Rotary Club to the participants. The participants will come back together using smaller focus groups based on services they currently provide or may be able to expand to include. The conversation in the focus groups will be guided to create a plan to address the 3 to 4 top issues identified. Once the plan is in place the Red Bank Rotary Club will observe the roll out and communicate the results to the group at large. The expected cycle of this project is 12 to 18 moths.

The Rotary Club of Red Bank, through it’s Foundation, is a 501(c)3 non-profit and is one of over 34,000 clubs worldwide. Rotary, which now has 1.5 million members, was founded in 1905; the local Club was chartered in 1921. Rotary areas of focus include promoting peace; fighting disease, particularly polio; providing clean water, sanitation, and hygiene; supporting education; saving and enhancing the lives of mothers and children; growing economies; and protecting the environment.

The Rotary Club of Red Bank meets in person on the 1^st, 2^nd and 4^th Thursdays, 12:00-1:30 PM, at the Navesink Country Club, Red Bank and on the 4^th Thursday of the Month at 6 PM in locations to be announced. For more information please visit the Red Bank Rotary website: www.RedBankRotary.org

Rotary International in the News