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July 8th Meeting Recap

Although it was a scorcher outside, the air conditioning was working well inside Brimstone for our July 8th meeting. Stacey Nyman led us with Happy Dollars and a few things of note were that Carolynn DeSandre shared she has a new granddaughter, Doug Higgins completed his 26th Peachtree Road Race on July 4th and Lou Weiland expressed his gratitude for the support the club members have shown him during the cardiac issues he has faced over the last year. We are all happy to see Lou feeling better! 

Former member Kristi Crockett, who served two consecutive terms as President of our club, was recognized as a major donor to the Rotary Foundation. (A major donor is someone who gives $10,000 to the Rotary Foundation.) Foundation Chair Doug Higgins and District Foundation Global Grants Chair Mike Mudd reflected back on Kristi's time with the club and Kristi shared the most impactful time for her in the club was traveling to eSwatini to visit Heart for Africa's Project Canaan. She also mentioned the mentoring support she provided to a single mother living at The Drake House, helping her learn how to budget and save money for a new living environment. (That single mother is now a doctor!) 

Immediate Past President Rick Clark had a few more awards to for members. Regina Orlick and Jeff Esterkes were presented with the Service Above Self award for attending every service project since joining the club. It's hard to imagine our club without them!  Mike Mudd was honored with the Kathy Meyers Foundation Award for sharing his enthusiasm and knowledge of the Foundation with our club members. Lisa Gelber was presented with a Distinguished Leadership Award for supporting Rick behind the scenes. 

Our guest speaker today was our very own Carolynn DeSandre, who officially joined our club in March 2025. Although she has lived in Alpharetta for 37 years, Carolynn was born in NY and attended Catholic boarding school until she was 12. When her family moved to GA, she attended public school for the first time and was finally able to convince her father to let her wear jeans! Carolynn's first degree was in Journalism, but she pivoted to nursing, specializing in women's health, midwifery and family practice. Fun fact - Carolynn has delivered over 5,000 Georgians! Eighteen years ago, she became a nurse educator, and now she is the Dean of the College of Health Sciences and Professions at University of North Georgia, which includes oversight for over 100 faculty/staff and more than 1000 students across 4 campuses. Carolynn shares her time and talent with the medically underserved, both here locally and internationally, when she travels with nursing students to help those in other countries. She has raised three children in Alpharetta and now has three grandchildren, all in the local area. Thank you for sharing your story with us, Carolynn!

Order Rotary Merchandise

Several members have inquired about being able to order polo/golf style shirts with our club logo so a "store" for Rotary Club of North Fulton merchandise has been created at the link below. The store will be open through August 8th. Members will pay for their order via credit card and all orders from our members will be shipped together to save money on shipping charges. Please note, the vendor (Patricia's Spiritwear) uses a number of different companies for their products and they each have their own sizing guide. Please check the sizing guide for each item you order. Don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions! gelberlisa@gmail.com or (770) 856-9509

https://patriciasspiritwear.tuosystems.com/stores/rotaryclub#cpid2869719

Rotary Foundation Update

Since it’s inception, our club has been a supporter of the Rotary Foundation because our founders believed donations to the Foundation can have huge impacts locally and globally.  Most donations to the Foundation are either to the Annual Fund or Polio Plus.  We’ll discuss other funds in the future.  Included in your quarterly dues is a $25 donation to the Annual Fund.  One half of the funds donated come back to our District in three years to be used for District Grants.  Our club has recently used a District Grant in the amount of $2000 to create Take Out Art Kits for local elementary students. The other funds are used for Global Grants. If you were at our July 8th meeting, you heard about the $330,000 global grant our club was awarded to create a living water dam for Heart for Africa in Swaziland (now eSwatini). In both cases, these funds are used to match funds clubs raise and have a multiplier effect leveraging Rotarian’s contributions.  Donations to Polio Plus go directly to help in Rotary’s efforts to eradicate polio.  Our efforts began in 1985, and we are so very close top accomplishing this goal! 

Community Service Update

As reminder, our club will be organizing back to school supplies for North Fulton Community Charities immediately after our next meeting, July 22nd. Many thanks to those who donated in support of this worthy cause!

Greenway Murals - Phase 3

It is time to start thinking about Phase 3 of our Greenway Murals. Our goal is to schedule painting days for late September/early October. This is a project that is large in scope and takes many volunteers, especially on the actual paint days (two days, typically). The City of Alpharetta is on board for the continuation of this project. For those of you new to the club, we have worked with student artists (some of last year's pictured below) to create art concepts around the theme of "Clean Water for All" which they then paint on a raised sewer cover along the Greenway, with our supervision. This project has a huge impact in our community, as tens of thousands of people visit the Greenway each month! Please reach out to Thomas Nolfa (tnolfa@tnolfa.com) for further details. 

Global Grant Update for our District

As mentioned in the Foundation article for this edition of our Newsletter, part of the money donated to the annual fund of The Rotary Foundation comes back to our District in the form of Global Grants. This year, the District required clubs to fill out a pre-application with a due date of May 15, 2025 to better prepare for the review of the applications. The District received 17 global grant requests from 12 clubs, including our own club. The grant request for our club, if approved, will be focused on supporting a water project in Kenya. Amie Blanton and Rick Clark are leading our efforts with this application.

A few of the other interesting Global Grant requests include cleft palate repair surgeries in Bolivia, preventing spina bifida and anencephaly in high-risk pregnancies in Ethiopia and a public toilet facility in Nepal. Stay tuned for more details once the grant requests are reviewed and processed!

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