This month’s newsletter comes to you from Down Under!  Cassy and I are visiting a former Group Study Exchange team member who stayed with us in 2009.  She and her husband and three boys are showing us what life is like in and around Auckland, New Zealand. In a couple of days, we’re off to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to join about 14,000 other Rotarians for Rotary International’s annual convention.  The Aussies love a good time, so it should be a blast!

 

Following on the heels of Maria Kidner’s successful training program for nurses in Rwanda, the Board of Directors has given the Service Committee the green light to start work on a much bigger project there.  Thirty-one mostly rural nurses participated in Maria’s pilot training event in February, where they learned how to diagnose and treat strep throat.  If untreated, as is often the case in Rwanda, strep throat often leads to rheumatic heart disease, which can be fatal.  The plan is to develop a larger, more robust training program supported by a Rotary Foundation Global Grant, which is a minimum project of $30,000.  The Rotary Club of Kigali has already agreed to be the host club for the project.  The Board approved a matching club donation of $2,000 to get the ball rolling; donations will be sought from other Rotary clubs and districts in addition to matching funds from The Rotary Foundation.

 

Proving once again that many hands make light work, 28 volunteers last Saturday (May 13) assembled 300 Adventure Bags that will be distributed to Shoshoni youngsters on the Wind River Indian Reservation this summer.  Eight Lander Rotarians and  six Riverton Rotarians and family members were joined by several college and high school students to pack the bags at Wyoming Catholic College. Health and Wellness is the theme and the bags contain toothbrushes and toothpaste (donated by Lander dentists), jump ropes, hairbrushes, coloring books, a Rotary water bottle, and other items.

 

The club’s service project to sand and re-stain the benches along Main Street, scheduled for last weekend (May 12-13), was postponed because of unfavorable weather. It has been tentatively rescheduled for the upcoming weekend (May 19-20).  Bryan Neely is heading up this project.

 

The April food drive for refreshing the food stocks at the four Little Pantry locations in Lander was a big success ($120 in cash, plus some food donations). The drive emphasized the need for food donations and cash year-round.  If you don’t know which foods to buy, or don’t want to do the shopping, you may make donations to the club (memo line: food pantries) and Service Committee members will do the shopping for you!

 

If you haven’t yet volunteered to help with the Rotary Buffalo BBQ on July 4, please sign up now at https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60b0c4ea8a82fa4fa7-2023#/ . This is an “all-hands-on-deck” event for our club and everyone’s help is needed!