On Saturday, April 19, our Rotary District encouraged clubs to join a district wide initiative: A Day of Service - A Focus on the Environment. Fortunately for us, ST Rotary Member and Souderton’s Mayor, Dan Yocum had a opportunity for us to participate in!
The opportunity was promoted with about a weeks’ notice, and it was a holiday weekend…so you might have accidentally overlooked the event. Dan shared with me, that he plans a “clean up” event each Spring, somewhere in Souderton. Hopefully next year, we can share the date a bit soon!
Three Rotary Members and 15 community members showed up on the corner of Central and Railroad Avenues at 9AM. Many of the community members were connected to ST Rotary Member Jessmy Trochez with the non-profit, Help to Help. You will soon hear more about the recent kindergarten build in Honduras with our club, Emmanuel Lutheran and Help to Help. ST Rotary Member John Heidgerd stopped by and shared briefly about his recent trip to Honduras and the dedication of the school. (He will share formally at an upcoming meeting.)
There was not a lot of “trash” at this location, but there was a significant amount of leaves/sticks/branches that were clogging up the rain runoff areas. Dan showed me how when the runoff areas are blocked during a heavy rainstorm, the rain is channeled on to Central Avenue and down to Rt 113, flooding homes and businesses in its path. My clean up partners and I opened a few drains and got the water moving. After two hours we were feeling good about our progress, I spotted a snake and took this as my directive to head home.
In my President Elect training (click here) a few weeks ago, I was reminded that we should consider having multiple opportunities for members and potential members to get involved. For example, not everyone can afford a $35 meal every week; not everyone has time in their schedule to spend at a meeting; not everyone is attracted to the format of our meetings.
As I shared before, a quote from the training that struck a chord for me, “Diversity spurs innovation & creativity which leads to clubs having a greater impact.”
There were at least a dozen community members at this clean-up event who I would be excited to welcome into our membership. Good golly – they were up at 9AM on a holiday weekend cleaning out a stinky drain – they are ready to serve! Cost/time/location/program – how can we be creative to welcome more community members who might be challenged by one or more of these barriers into club membership?
What kind of impact do we want our club to have for the next 100 years?
How are YOU going to help us get there? It's great to have ideas but we also need club members who are ready and willing to get involved.
Thanks for reading and supporting our club. PLEASE JOIN US – we really want to hear from everyone on Thursday!
Oh – I almost forgot – Happy Earth Day – it’s celebrated on April 22!
Sarah Bergin
President-Elect