Silverscout Presents - Gibson & Watters

 

 

            Mar. 2: Lunch at Nectar, Silverscout Presents, Matt Gibson.

 

            Mar. 9: Rotary Connect, 4:30 p.m., Lenore and Bob Romney’s house, 4822 S. Myrtle.

 

            Mar. 16: Lunch at Nectar, Cancer Can’t, Emily Grankowski

 

            Mar. 21: Rotary Serves, Food for Kidz, GU Cataldo Hall, arrive at 5 p.m., packaging at 6-8 p.m.

 

 

            Jobs wanted: Following the resignation of Tim Zacharias, the board still needs to fill the secretary position for the Rotary year, which ends June 30.

 

            A few openings also remain for the 2020-21 Rotary Year, when President-elect Steve Bergman moves up to the club presidency.

 

            Fund-raiser help: Several members are needed to help the efforts for the Oct. 2 fund-raiser at the McGinnity Room, 116 W. Pacific. The club’s annual event funds projects at Holmes Elementary and other activities.

 

 

           

            Food was the main topic at the club’s Feb. 24 meeting.       

 

            While members dined on pasta, salad and bite-sized desserts, Jim Dodd, volunteer director and regional manager for Food for Kidz talked about packaged meals sent nationally and to groups worldwide for needy children and their families.

 

            The sustainable sustenance includes rice and beans and oatmeal.  Just add water, boil and the contents of each four cups produce four pounds of food, Dodd said.

 

            A 48-year resident of the Spokane Valley, Dodd was working with Spokane’s HRC Ministries trying to feed needy youngsters.  But adding to the list of food-drive collections, about three years he sought another way – the packaging path.

 

            Dodd said he was down to number seven on his list of contacts for the effort, when he met the leaders of Food for Kidz, in tiny Stewart, Minn., population of 571 in the southeast center of the state.

 

            In Stewart, a Lions Club used proceeds from pull-tab money 15 years ago to start its operations in a former school house.

 

            Since HRC and Dodd’s work in the construction industry had facilities and tools to handle pallets of products.  Food for Kidz people recruited scientists from nearby General Mills and Pillsbury to develop packages that would meet FDA requirements and products that would last for three years.

 

            Using volunteers from service clubs, churches and other organizations, workers assemble, weigh and seal the packages.  Each package costs 25 cents and a $2,500 effort yields 10,000 meals of packaging

 

            After his talk at our club, Dodd is coordinating a group of 160 workers, including Rotarians, in Yakima.  Two weeks from now he heads to villages in Uganda to help that effort, where locusts have devastated local crops.

 

            Dodd showed photos of ramshackle huts and schools in Kenya and primitive well-drinking apparatus.

 

            As Food for Kidz says, “We’ll go anywhere if we can change the lift of one child.”

 

            President Melinda Keberle said our club secured a $350 Express Grant from our Rotary District to fund our share of the Food for Kidz project.

 

           

            Spokane North Rotary’s next project is the evening of March 21, a Food for Kidz meal assembly event at Gonzaga University’s Cataldo Hall.  Members, family and friends should arrive between 4:30 to 5 p.m.  After instructions and donning hair nets and gloves, teams of eight to 10 will staff packaging tables.  Each table will have two hour shifts – 6 to 8 p.m.

 

            Joining the event will be members of six or seven Rotary Clubs and GU’s Rotaract and Interact clubs.

 

            A sign-up sheet for the event was distributed Feb. 24 and interested members are asked to e-mail Melinda Keberle or Chuck Rehberg as soon as possible so volunteers can assemble products and gather enough packaging stations.