Jack Cameron declared that we had 100% attendance at this unofficial meeting.

Announcements:

Randy Willman gave a shout-out to Dave Parsons and his group for playing Christmas music downtown on December 23rd.

Myrene Hoover suggested that we all click on United’s 10 Million Charity Miles giveaway at the UAL website and vote between now and December 31 for Rotary as your favorite charity to be given a portion of 10 million miles based on the number of votes received as a non-profit partner of UAL.  Rotary will also earn 25000 miles as a participating non-profit.

Myrene also discovered at Rotary has had a number of mottos over the years starting in 1911 with the motto:  “He Profits Most Who Serves Best.”  That motto later morphed into the more PC “One Profits Most Who Serves Best.”

Pat Schnack let the group know that Nancy Pacha’s mother has died.  Nancy had some difficulty getting home because of the weather and has almost immediately turned around and gone back out east to be with her other daughter in New England. Our thoughts and prayers are with Nancy and her family.

Chris Knapp announced that we need another 2 people to have an even ten tables completely filled at our 25th Anniversary celebration on January 14.

For Happy Bucks we shared our worst and best gifts given or received for Christmas.

Program:

Brad Langguth, Karin Franklin and Deb Dunkhase talked about giving meaningful service.  Casey Cook described volunteer service as using one’s best talents to make things happen in the community.  Casey sees service as being a series of concentric circles:  The inner circle keeps the club going with doing the behind-the-scenes stuff on a weekly basis.  The next circle out is the service that supports our various projects such as Youth Exchange, Can Do, and grant giving.  The third circle involves Rotarians in the broader community and international service, not necessarily just the things that we officially support.  There is a whole constellation of community and international volunteer efforts that are not official Rotary projects but that are compatible with Rotary service ideals that we as individuals support.  The panel represented some of our more active community volunteers among our membership.

Deb Dunkhase initially got involved in community volunteering when she started junior high in a school that was in a community large enough for a town library.  She saw that there were no story times at that library and she volunteered to start story times. 

The Iowa Children’s Museum offers between 500 to 700 volunteer opportunities every year.  Some are fulfilled by active Rotarians.  For example, the Downtown Rotary provides a few volunteers every family free night to help with activities and crowd control.  There are sometimes as many as 1000 people in the museum on those free nights.  The AM Rotary has had volunteers help the ICM put together new exhibits.  Volunteers see the impact of their work directly while serving the ICM because it is so evident in the experience that kids have at the Museum.  There are many other opportunities to volunteer for specific ICM projects such as assisting at one of the four special celebrations each year, or to be a “Playology” volunteer.

Karin Franklin stressed that in retirement especially people want to know what they can do, and there really is no lack of ways to volunteer if one is proactive in Iowa City.  Her first volunteer activity as a child was helping her mother to take flowers to people in their church family.  Karin has particularly become engaged at the emotional level through the many trips she has taken as an Iowa MOST volunteer.  It is not always necessary to travel abroad or two a developing country in order to serve internationally.  She has helped with FAMSCO loading supplies onto helicopters and trucks.  That is an easy way for almost anyone to get involved in an international project that is useful and great fun.

Brad Langguth emphasized that one can set the volunteer experience to vary depending on your time of life and skills.  He and his wife started out as young parents helping with Preucil, school and church activities that their kids were involved in.  Later his volunteer activity changed to fit his changing circumstances, and varied also between more administrative functions and more hands-on functions.  You can pick your volunteer experience based on whether you are more interested in hands-on or more planning and over-sight roles.  There are needs at all levels just depending on the organization and the situation in that specific group. Some of the most meaningful volunteer assignments for Brad have been hands-on overseas projects such as in Haiti right after the big earthquake with a Jimmy Carter Build for Habitat for Humanity, and a trip with Blessed Ministries to South Africa last year.  You come back seeing things from another perspective.  These experiences, especially the hands-on volunteer work change the world and you for the better.

There were questions and concerns about how to find out what is going on in the community, both in terms of events and volunteer opportunities. RSVP keeps track of the volunteer opportunities in the Johnson County area and the Cultural Corridor website keeps track of a lot of events.  However, there is nothing that goes through a bunch of area websites and tries to put all of this information together in one place.  Many saw that as a need in the community that would be do-able in this age of technology.

 “Unofficial” Scribe,

Liz Nichols