The Southern Rensselaer County Rotary Club, enhanced by its Danes Rotaract, had the largest participation — 10 people — in Saturday’s Rotary Leadership Institute (RLI), held at the UAlbany School of Public Health on the Health Sciences Campus.

RLI offers three sequential levels of study, plus a graduate level. Roberto Martinez completed the third level on Saturday, and was awarded a certificate of completion. That brings to five the number of SRC Rotarians who have graduated (in earlier years, Bill Dowd — who took a graduate-level class today, Debbie Rodriguez, Dean Calamaras, and Doris Calamaras did so). Plus, this year Jim Lehayne and Andy Leyhane completed Level 2 and are on track to graduate next year, and John Justino completed Level 1.

Also completing Level 1 were four Danes Rotaractors — president Lindsey Riback, Lindsey Tolman, Christopher Joseph, and Dustin Moore. This was the first year Rotaract members were eligible for RLI involvement, and SRC paid the registration fees for all four as well as all its own members’ fees.

The club secretary no longer keeps minutes of the proceedings, so we’ve switched to this briefer format, written primarily in less-detailed note form to preserve the club’s electronic archive.

Members Attending (17, quorum achieved): Andy Leyhane, Murray Forth, Pat Bailey, Terry Brewer, Peter Brown, Debbie Brown, Debbie Rodriguez, Phil Kellerman, Bill Dowd, Jim Leyhane, Roberto Martinez, Dean Calamaras, Doris Calamaras, Dick Drumm, Ray Hannan, Kevin Leyhane, Charlie Foote.

Guests (1): Rachel Stark.

President Andy Leyhane welcomed the members and our guest from the Capital District Rotary Club. Tonight’s meeting was planned as a club assembly to update and discuss the direction and activities of the club. …

… Bill Dowd reported that the total of donations from individual members to our latest ShelterBox drive has reached $5,290. He reiterated that he would be collecting through the end of the month before delivering the checks to Assistant District Governor Jack Faddegon, our district ShelterBox officer. Our goal is $6,000, and Bill emphasized that donations at any level are welcomed; members so far have donated in amounts ranging from $20 to $1,000 each. Anyone else wishing to help is asked to give or mail checks to Bill, made payable to ShelterBox, which makes them tax deductible. …

Andy reported on the breakfast meeting held this morning and its special guest, Auggie the therapy-dog-in-training at Bell Top Elementary School. SRC was presented with a certificate of appreciation from the school for its financial support of the therapy dog project. (Click here for a breakfast meeting report.) …

… A general discussion was held on several topics, chief among them member participation and attendance, and club fundraising activities. Terry Brewer solicited ideas on some of the questions to include in the member survey he is working on. Much of it will be based on Rotary International surveys. He will distribute it in the next week, and ask for a response from all members within a week of receiving it. … The club’s Board of Directors, which will gather immediately after this meeting, will further discuss the efforts. (Click here for a Board meeting report.)

… EVENTS — A contingent of 10 SRC and Danes Rotaract members will participate in the annual Rotary Leadership Institute session scheduled for this Saturday. … Volunteers are being sought to staff the SRC Recycling Day scheduled for Saturday, November 3. Please see event coordinator Murray Forth if interested. … Next Thursday’s special dinner guest will be Dr. Martha Lepow, who Jim Leyhane interviewed on camera for the “History of Polio” video project in conjunction with District 7190, CASDA, and the UAlbany School of Public Health. Dr. Lepow was a pioneer in the early days of polio immunization research. World Polio Day is scheduled for next Wednesday, October 24, with a live streaming program worldwide. John Justino plans to record the program, then show it at the Thursday meeting. Please plan to attend.

Meet your new Southern Rensselaer County Rotary Club vice president.

Terry Brewer, a past president who had been serving as an at-large member of the club Board of Directors and as District 7190 membership chair, was elected at Thursday’s board meeting to fill the vacant vice presidential role created by Ray Hannan’s resignation earlier this year.

The Board also agreed to assign the VP and at-large directors Jim Leyhane and Bill Dowd, all of whom have served multiple times as club president, to act on a rotating annual basis as mentors to presidents and presidents-elect.

Terry’s election, approved under club bylaws regarding filling of vacancies, creates an additional vacancy in the at-large category. Thus, the Board now is seeking to fill the positions of (a) president-elect and (b) three at-large director roles. Anyone with an interest in being considered for any of the positions is asked to contact President Andy Leyhane as soon as possible. Training sessions for presidents-elect begin in January.

The Board as now constituted:

President: Andy Leyhane
President-elect: vacant
Vice President: Terry Brewer
Treasurer: Murray Forth
Secretary: Pat Bailey
Immediate Past President: Roberto Martinez
At-Large: Bill Dowd, Jim Leyhane, 3 vacancies

SRC Third Thursday Breakfast Meeting
Greenbush YMCA
20 Community Way, East Greenbush

Members Attending (6, no quorum): Andy Leyhane, Murray Forth, Jim Leyhane, Shannon Romanowski, Terry Brewer, Marty Mahar.

Guests (2): Jaime Gibbs and Carol Willis of Bell Top Elementary School, plus Auggie.

• President Andy Leyhane opened the meeting with welcoming comments and the Pledge of Allegiance. He reviewed various Rotary events, our ShelterBox donation drive, Rotary Leadership Institute (RLI) scheduled for this Saturday, and our Recycling Day scheduled for Saturday, November 3.

• SRC member and Greenbush YMCA Director Shannon Romanowski announced a Thanksgiving food drive by the Y, and the club will partner in the effort. Shannon will provide details to Andy for distribution throughout the club.

• SRC member Marty Mahar, principal of Bell Top Elementary School, introduced two of his teachers, Jaime Gibbs and Carol Willis. They handle the training and care of Auggie, the school’s therapy dog who they brought along to meet the Rotarians. They described Auggie’s training process, and how he is being introduced to students and staff. They also shared anecdotes about Auggie’s interaction with kids.

A program called “Letters to Auggie” has been introduced in the school that allows students to write to Auggie about their feelings. Auggie “responds” to the letters regarding student anxiety, stress, and apprehensions. The writing process is very therapeutic for everyone.

The Bell Top staffers also presented the SRC Rotary Club with certificates of appreciation for financially supporting Auggie at Bell Top.

• The next Third Thursday breakfast meeting will be held at 7 a.m. on November 15 at the Greenbush YMCA.

The Danes Rotaract club, sponsored by SRC, held its first activity of the 2018-19 Rotary Year, a happy hour event at Wolff’s Biergarten in Albany’s Warehouse District on Tuesday evening.

The event, the second annual such initiative for the two-year-old Rotaract group, was created to benefit the Freedom From Fistula Foundation (FFFF).

The foundation, which SRC has been financially supporting for several years with member Becky Raymond as the lead, assists women with specific gynecological  problems in such African nations as Sierra Leone, Malawi, and Madagascar. (Click on the links to get updates on the work in each country.)

This is a busy week for the Southern Rensselaer County Rotary Club.

• We will have a 7-8 a.m. breakfast meeting at the Greenbush YMCA, with Marty Mahar bringing a very special guest — Auggie, the SRC-sponsored therapy dog from Bell Top  Elementary School. Please let Terry Brewer know by noon Wednesday if you will be participating.

• Our 6 p.m. dinner meeting at Quigley’s on Thursday will be a “club assembly” working session, with President Andy Leyhane leading a discussion on our goals and plans for the remainder of the 2018-19 Rotary Year. Please let Debbie Brown know by Tuesday evening if you will be participating.

• On Saturday, a record team of 10 SRC members and Danes Rotaractors will participate in the annual Rotary Leadership Institute (RLI) at the UAlbany School of Public Health.

Host Shannon Romanowski will have the usual continental breakfast available at the Y. At dinner, we’ll be dining on Quigley’s popular lasagna, antipasto salad, chef’s choice of sides, bread, dessert, and beverages. Plus, the cash bar will be available as always.

We already have more than a dozen people signed up for dinner, but the meeting topic calls for a lot more participation. Please make a point of joining your fellow Rotarians.

Because our club secretary no longer keeps minutes of the proceedings, we’ve switched to this briefer format, written primarily in less-detailed note form to preserve the club’s electronic archive.

Members Attending (14, quorum): Andy Leyhane, Murray Forth, Kevin Leyhane, Bill Dowd, Debbie Rodriguez, Terry Brewer, Carole Spencer, Jim Leyhane, Roberto Martinez, Dick Drumm, Phil Kellerman, Debbie Brown, Peter Brown, Pat Bailey.

Guests: Matt Episcopo.

Bill Dowd provided an update on the ongoing effort to raise funds for ShelterBox via member contributions. Our club goal is to raise $6,000 by the end of October, to be added to any donation from the club treasury. As of tonight’s meeting we have collected $4,290, so we are just $1,710 from reaching the goal. Bill emphasized that donations of any amount are gladly accepted, explaining, “It is the cumulative power of donations large and small that will help ShelterBox in its ongoing efforts to aid many of the estimated 85 million people worldwide affected by conflict and natural disasters.” All checks should be made payable to ShelterBox to assure tax deductability, and mailed or delivered to him by our November 1 meeting for aggregation and delivery to the District 7190 Shelter Box liaison officers. …

… Bill also reported that a club-record 10 SRC and Danes Rotaract members have been registered for the Saturday, October 20, Rotary Leadership Institute (RLI) to be held at the UAlbany School of Public Health. Our record had been last year’s eight. Because we matched or exceeded last year’s figure, the District is underwriting the cost of one registration fee. We have people registered in all four levels of training, but we still have room for more. The revised deadline is this Saturday, and anyone interested in being signed up is asked to contact Bill no later than Saturday noon, and he will handle their registration. …

… World Polio Day is scheduled for Wednesday, October 24, with a live streaming program worldwide. John Justino plans to record the program, then show it at our Thursday, October 25, dinner meeting. Our special guest at that event will be Dr. Martha Lepow, a childhood infectious diseases specialist who was a pioneer in the battle against polio. Dr. Lepow was interviewed by Dr. Jim Leyhane on-camera as part of our World Polio Day video project last year. … Our Danes Rotaract club is in the process of recruiting new members to replace those who left the area after graduating in June. Their first event will be a “Happy Hour Fundraiser” to benefit the Freedom From Fistula Foundation (FFFF). It will begin at 7 p.m. next Tuesday at Wolff’s Biergarten on Broadway in Albany’s Warehouse District. $1 from the price of each drink purchased will go to the foundation. …

Matt Episcopo, a former law enforcement specialist who now is a much-traveled motivational speaker, was the evening’s guest. He presented what he described as a small slice of one of his most popular presentations, “How To Make A Strong First Impression.” … Event coordinator Murray Forth will be circulating a signup sheet for volunteers to staff a shift at our “SRC Recycling Day,” scheduled for 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, November 3, at the Wainschaf Associates headquarters at 589 3rd Street Ext., Rensselaer (behind Target). He said he will have an employee on hand to do the heavy lifting, but we need staffers to collect money, answer questions, help accept papers for shredding, etc. …  President Andy Leyhane reminded all attendees that next week’s session at Quigley’s will be a Club Assembly, “so please come armed with your ideas and questions for our club to foster a good discussion.” The club’s Board of Directors will meet after the dinner meeting.

Please share this flyer via social media, email, drone, etc., to help our Danes Rotaract partners in their public service efforts. Welcome back, UAlbany School of Public Health students.

To All SRC Rotarians:

We’re just four days from the deadline for you to take advantage of a free offer from your Southern Rensselaer County Rotary Club.

Here’s the deal: You spend the day participating in the Saturday, October 20, Rotary Leadership Institute (RLI) workshop and SRC will pay your fee to cover registration, course materials, a continental breakfast, and a full lunch. (Parking is free.)

Ask any of your fellow Rotarians who have taken the RLI course at any level — 1, 2, 3 or Graduate — and they’ll probably tell you they found it satisfying in a number of ways — organization and team-building skills you can put to use in your career as well as in your Rotary activities; networking with Rotarians from throughout the sprawling District 7190 region that you’ll find useful in many ways, and learning how to enhance your public service skills. (You can get more details on RLI by clicking on this link.)

We already have club members requesting to be registered at Level 2, 3, and Graduate. But, Level 1 for first-time RLI participants is where it all begins. We’d like to maintain SRC’s record of being the largest, or among the largest, contingents attending the session, to be held at the UAlbany School of Public Health just off Columbia Turnpike.

So far, we have Andy Leyhane, Roberto Martinez, and Jim Leyhane prepped to attend various Levels, with Bill Dowd and Debbie Rodriguez ready to attend the Graduate level. You don’t have to do anything to register except to let Bill know your intent no later than noon Wednesday, October 10. He will take care of registering all SRC members who have stepped up. You can contact him by replying to this email. Clean and simple process.

Won’t you please join us and help you and your community get more out of Rotary?

Those of you who regularly access the meeting minutes on this website will notice a change in the format since we resumed weekly meetings this month. Because our club secretary no longer is keeping minutes of the proceedings, we’ve switched to this format, written primarily in less-detailed note form, so we still will have a record for the club archive.

Members Attending (12, quorum): Andy Leyhane, Murray Forth, Kevin Leyhane, Bill Dowd, Debbie Rodriguez, Terry Brewer, Carole Spencer, Jim Leyhane, Roberto Martinez, Dick Drumm, Phil Kellerman, Ray Hannan.

Guests: None.

PROGRAM: “Tariffs vs. NAFTA” was the topic of a discussion led by Phil Kellerman. It came in the wake of Sunday’s announcement that the U.S. and Canada have reached a deal on a “new, modernized trade agreement” designed to replace the 1994 NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) pact President Trump had long criticized as being harmful to the American economy. In a joint statement, the two nations said the new deal would be called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), an expansion of a trade agreement reached earlier between the U.S. and Mexico.

Bill Dowd reported on his push for an expanded club donation to ShelterBox, which is juggling multiple disaster relief efforts simultaneously around the world. As one example, he explained that the latest numbers on just the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the major Indonesian island of Sulawesi continue to trend upward, now with more than 1,300 deaths, tens of thousands of injuries, and billions of dollars in damage to buildings and infrastructure. He noted that  the club normally donates $2,000 to $3,000 to ShelterBox each year, and he is shooting for an additional $5,000 by the end of the month. Bill  emphasized that any size donation — $5, $10, $20, $50 or  more — would help toward defraying the cost of $1,000 per ShelterBox, a price that has held steady for years. The cumulative impact is what we’re looking for. We currently are at $3,000, and the push will run through the end of the month. Checks should be made payable to ShelterBox to be eligible for a tax deduction. … President Andy Leyhane announced that, after expenses, our raffle for a wine dinner for 12 at Cafe Capriccio would clear about $2,200 for the club treasury. Carole Spencer drew the winning ticket stub, held by Murray Forth. …

We still are recruiting members to participate in the Saturday, October 20, Rotary Leadership Institute (RLI) workshops. We have four people expressing interest so far: Jim and Andy Leyhane at Level 2, Roberto Martinez at Level 3, and Debbie Rodriguez at the Graduate level. The club will pay the registration fees. The deadline for registration  is Wednesday, October 10. Anyone who would like to participate is asked to contact Bill Dowd, who will handle registration for the club. … We have four students from Maple Hill High School who are enrolled in the 2018-19 Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA). SRC is paying the tuition for all of them. … Next Thursday, Matt Episcopo, an international motivational speaker, will be our guest, presenting on the topic “Making a Powerful First Impression.”