It has been a great summer to travel through Georgia and visit all of you and your great clubs. I particularly enjoyed all the great ideas and fellowship we shared at our District 6900 celebration in Sandestin and being on hand in Sandy Springs when Will MacArthur was honored for his Rotary Foundation giving as an Arch Klumph Society member. I also  congratulate Mary Reid of the Rotary Club of Columbus for her 100th birthday - celebrated in style by the club!  Congratulations to both Mary and Will for these significant achievements - and thanks to both for their dedication to Rotary. And congratulations to the clubs and individuals honored in Sandestin.

As we move forward into fall, Rotary International focuses on Basic Education and Literacy in September. Many of you have been working on projects to benefit education and youth - you can read about some of them in this newsletter. We are about to kickoff a major education initiative called Youth & Peace in Action (YPA) ... designed to engage our high school students in peace-making and service projects. September 10 is the last day to register a school in this year's  YPA program so if your local schools are interested and haven't yet enrolled, encourage them to visit the Youth & Peace in Action website now!  The kick-off takes place on September 21 - the International Day of Peace - and we're working on Watch Parties to enable you to see more about this exciting program! Watch for an email in the next couple of days with more information about how you can join in!

You all know that ending Polio is Rotary's #1 service project - and we are fast approaching World Polio Day on October 24. I encourage each of you to think about what you and your clubs could do this year to continue pushing this initiative forward. It would be wonderful to see every club hold an awareness event and/or make a contribution to End Polio now. See endpolio.org for ideas.

District Secretary Carol Lipphardt has prepared a district directory for those that prefer to have a printed copy or a document on their phones or computers. The directory is now available in the document library of the district website. You can also go directly to it with this link - https://rotary6900.org/resource/1252. Thanks to Carol for providing this valuable resource in this format. And thanks to District Webmaster, PDG Alec Smythe for continuing to provide additional tools on the website. You can now see a list of Assistant Governors and the clubs they support at https://rotary6900.org/club/assistant-governor.

All of you are working hard to make a difference in your communities - keep up the good work! I look forward to seeing more of you this fall! Thanks for all you do.

Pictured: Governor Mary with Governor Nominee Andre Marria and Governor Elect George Grenade in SanDestin