Evanston150 is a community-wide initiative that engages all of us in imagining our future, resulting in 10 visionary ideas to celebrate Evanston’s 150th anniversary in 2013.

At our club meeting on 15 May, The ETHS Interact Club presented two checks to help provide a field for children to play soccer in Livingstone, Zambia. They raised $500 during one week by asking fellow ETHS students in the school cafeteria for contributions. Playing soccer will help keep boys and girls out of trouble, instill pride, and incorporate females into the community. The soccer field is located in Dambwa Rotary Park which was funded by Rotary, and the Rotary Club of Livingston will provide oversight. Pictured above (from left to right) are: Brad Weiss, Vocational Service Chair; Dave Feeley, ETHS faculty advisor and honorary club member; Harold Bauer, International Service Chair; Katie Bertsche, ETHS Interact President-elect; and Zach Sandler, ETHS Interact President.

The ETHS Interact Club’s donation for the soccer field has several Rotary connections.

We adopted Golf Road between McCormick Blvd. and Crawford Road. Volunteers cleanup debris along the side of the road at least four times per year. John Searles organized the first highway cleanup in 2012 on Saturday 5 May. The volunteers above completed their mission in less than an hour. From left to right are: Gordon Zerkel, Steve Goranson, Ann Searles, Cyndy Crider, Michael Boe, Barry Lundberg, and Darrell Dixson.

Karena Bierman, our club president last year, shares her ideas about getting new members, why club service projects are important, and doing fun things to increase public awareness of Rotary. She also encourages every Rotarian to support The Rotary Foundation (TRF) by giving to the Annual Fund. Many Rotarians work with her planning gifts to TRF using bequests, the TRF Donor Advised Fund, and life income agreements. Karena’s hobby is vintage motorcycle racing. Last year, she entered twelve motorcycle races, and became the first woman to ever win the AHRMA National Title for the Historic Production-Lightweight class!

Read more about Karena in the May issue of The Rotarian, "Balancing Act" on page 55. If you do not have the magazine handy, here is a link to an adapted version of the article in Rotary’s new blog, Rotary Voices:  Service projects, motorcycles, and Rotary.

Volunteers from both Evanston Rotary clubs gathered on Saturday 28 April in the backyard of our house for a photo. Don Gwinn chaired our Rebuilding Together project this year. Rebuilding Together provides critical home repairs, modifications and improvements for America’s low-income homeowners. Beneficiaries are often elderly or disabled. We worked on an Orchard Village home in Glenview near the Golf Mill shopping center. Residents of the home, who all use wheelchairs, greatly appreciate volunteers who can do home repairs. Some volunteers started on Thursday removing flooring and kitchen cabinets. They continued on Friday building shelves for the garage and preparing for painting. Most volunteers came on Saturday, including members of the NU Rotaract Club.

For more photos, click the "More" link below:

At our meeting on 17 April, club president John Osterlund exchanges banners with the Group Study Exchange (GSE) team from Rotary District 3480 in Taiwan. Team leader, Uen Hua Chao ("Aircon") is next to John. Other team members are Song Lu, Penny Chen, Herbert Chang, and Spencer Chen. Club member Kate Collinson coordinated their visit in Evanston. Most GSE Teams consist of a Rotarian leader and four young professionals. During their four week visit to our district, they will make presentations at our district conference and at several area Rotary clubs. Rotary hosts organize an itinerary of vocational, educational, and cultural points of interest. A similar GSE Team from our district visited Taiwan in the spring of 2012. Since The Rotary Foundation’s Group Study Exchange program began in 1965, Rotary districts worldwide have sponsored nearly 15,000 GSE teams.

Both GSE Teams are online:

• Inbound Team’s Facebook page: http:www.facebook.com/3480GSE6440
• Outbound Team’s blog: http://gsetaipei2012.wordpress.com

StreetWise venders at table

Please bring non-perishable food items to our club meetings. Useful items include: canned vegetables, fruit, beans, chili, soup, dry beans, pasta, rice and soup mix. Someone from Streetwise will pick it up once a month. Bill Glader coordinates this activity, and volunteers take turns collecting food items at club meetings.

At our club meeting on 13 March 2012, Jim LoBianco, Executive Director of StreetWise, provided an overview of StreetWise’s programs. The magazine is sold by people without homes or those at-risk for homelessness. It is the oldest running street newspaper in North America. Supportive client programs target workforce development and training, housing outreach, and financial literacy. He stressed that StreetWise’s clients are men and women who are motivated to work and willing to take a job to attain or maintain stability in their lives and, generally, move on to more skilled, higher paying employment. He asked everyone to respect the work ethic and dignity of StreetWise vendors by taking the magazine if you pay for it. If you don't want to read it, pass it along to someone else.