May 6, 2021
Today's Speaker.....Joe Ryan, AIO Food & Energy Assistance
Cyber Buckets on the Table - Merry Spring Nature Center, through the end of May
Poem of the Day - Tom Chester reading a Robert Frost poem.......next week is John Viehman's turn!
Speaker: Joe Ryan/AIO Food and Energy Assistance
Joe is the Executive Director of AIO, after a successful 36 years with Adventure Advertising. Joe identified that AIO's new building opened in September 2020, in the middle of the capital goal program "More Food, More Often", where clients could come for food more than once a month. With the pandemic, they quickly moved to have no limitations on food assistance. Today, AIO provides 800% more food in the community than a year ago!! AIO gets its food donations from 3 main sources: Good Shephard Food Bank (where they can purchase goods at lower rates); Donations (food banks, supermarkets, collection bins, and individual drop-offs), and AIO purchases (mostly things like milk and bread).
AIO is also doing work in energy assistance, specifically aiding folks with long backlog of electric bills with CMP by providing some relief dollars and by working with people on budget assistance by providing them food. This saves dollars that allows more of their debt to be addressed. Joe mentioned that AIO is doubling their energy assistance efforts, focusing largely on preventing electrical service disconnects.
Joe's immediate work goals include raising awareness about AIO's services, and working on a number of proposals for AIO's previous building. He also identified a strong appreciation for outside organization's efforts, such as the Meals of Hope program that West Bay Rotary has been involved with. Finally, Joe discussed AIO's Weekend Meal (Backpack) Program, which has been hugely successful - AIO provides over 300 bags of food at 14 local schools each week. A video link to view more about this program is provided here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Joe closed the discussion by identifying that there are lots of opportunities to get involved at AIO. If interested, just reach out and contact Joe for more information.
Rotary Minute - Laura Evans provided a summary of her experiences with a Global Grant involved with microcredit bank projects in Ecuador.
Gwen Clemens has completed her Red Badge Program, and will receive her Blue Badge next week (she had to leave early today for work - we didn't forget Gwen!)
President Ken Gardiner, Sandy Cox and George Abendroth presented Mark Masterson with an Honorary Membership in West Bay Rotary, in response to all of Mark's active years locally with West Bay and his ongoing support from SC!
ALL CLUB MEMBERS are reminded that the draft Budget circulated to everyone by email will be discussed and voted on at next week's Meeting. If anyone has questions or comments, please contact Mark Coursey (marksrotaryemail@gmail.com)
Next Week's Speaker is Susan Wilson, Tumaini Fund Update