On 6/11/2019, both Chase Hogan and Janice Thigpen spoke to the club membership. Pictured above from left to right is Janice Thigpen (President-Elect) and Chase Hogan (Current President).
Chase Hogan:
Chase Hogan told the club membership about his experiences at this year's Rotary International Convention in Hamburg, Germany. Chase explained that Hamburg is a very old city and there are remnants from many past ages as well as modern buildings. Most people in the city either walk or ride bicycles to get around in the city and Chase and his wife walked around quite a bit. Chase also told everyone how great the weather was and how much they appreciated our club sending him to the convention.
Chase also spoke to how impressed he was with the Rotary organization after meeting Rotarians from all over the world and seeing how much good the Rotary organization does in the world at large. Chase was also impressed with some very large Interact and Rotaract organization who were represented at the convention. Chase told everyone about a young Interact student who lived in a very poor country where students had to walk several hours to school every day and then back home every evening to do their school homework. However, because her village did not have any electricity, doing schoolwork at night was difficult. Because of this difficulty, she came up with the idea to create backpacks woven out of used plastic bags to create a method of capturing solar power. Basically, the backpacks had a place on the outside of the backpack that held a solar collection device so that when the student walked to and from school, solar energy was being captured. The solar capturing device was circular and could be screwed onto the top of a glass canning jar and then turned on to create a lamp which the students could use to do their schoolwork after the sun went down. This girl shared her story at the convention.
When asked if he had any new ideas for projects that our club could do after going to the convention, Chase offered the following ideas:
- In Canada, some Rotarians created an online literacy site where both young children could learn to read and adults who were not familiar with English or could not read, could also learn to read. Chase said that he believes after talking to the Rotarians who created it, that the concept could be duplicated for our club for around $250.
- In some countries, blood donations can not be checked for diseases or sanitary conditions before being given to the person needing it. Chase said he will look into this further but suggested we could even hold blood drives that are sponsored by our club.
- Chase heard about many projects related to creating clean water from either salt water or dirty water. Chase agreed to look through his notes concerning water projects as well as for any other project ideas that he might come up with.
Janice Thigpen:
Janice explained that she wants our club to get more involved in service projects. Some ideas off the top of her head were:
- Small micro-libraries involving Interact or junior high students in making book shelves.
- Spelling Bee fund raiser.
- Rotary PSA online videos.
- Co-projects with SOS
Janice asked for everyone to help think of good service projects. Janice also told everyone to start thinking about getting new sponsors for our next Magnolia Bowl fundraiser.
