If you didn’t make it to our last Rotary Club of Forest Grove meeting, here’s what you missed…

Our Next Steak Sale Is On: The club is starting its next Steak Sale Fundraiser, which benefits all of our club’s community outreaches. We are offering packs two choice sirloin steaks from Columbia Empire Meats for $20 per pack (note the price increase from previous sales).

Orders for this round are due to Julia Kollar by no later than Sunday, March 13. Steak pickup will be on Thursday, March 17, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. at Jeff Duyck’s warehouse on 19th Avenue between Main and Ash Streets.

For more information or questions, please contact Julia.

Scholarship Program Is Open: Applications are now being accepted for the Rotary Club of Forest Grove’s annual scholarship program. Scholarships are awarded to high school seniors that live in the Forest Grove, Gaston and Banks school district attendance areas. These scholarships are made possible thanks to contributions from club members and from our annual car show, the Concours d’Elegance.

Scholarships vary in amounts from $500 to $2,000 and are awarded to help pay for the first year of college of vocational school at a school in the United State.

The application deadline is midnight on Saturday, April 7. The application process will once again take place completely online. Click Here For Additional Details.

For questions, please contact Scholarship Committee chair Sharon Olmstead at sharon.olmstead8571@gmail.com.

Crab Feed Is Back: After two years of cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Crab Feed is coming back in 2022!

Our club’s annual Crab Feed is scheduled for Wednesday, Apr. 20, from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Forest Grove Senior & Community Center. The Crab Feed is designed to be a social event for club members and their families to celebrate the good work that we do throughout the year. This is also traditionally when the club recognizes its latest Paul Harris Fellows.

Julia Kollar is re-forming the committee to take on the planning and execution of this event. If you are interested in helping out, please contact Julia.

Advanced tickets will be required to be purchased prior to the event (to assist in budgeting) and will be available soon.

Steak Feed Returns: Our annual Steak Feed is also returning after a two-year hiatus. This year’s event will take place on Friday, June 10, on the campus of Pacific University.

Designed as a community event, the Steak Feed is specifically targeted as a fundraiser for our club’s involvement in the Rotary Youth Exchange program (which we also hope to see return in 2022). A meal featuring a choice steak, potatoes, vegetables and dessert is prepared and served by club members.

As one of our club’s major fundraisers, the Steak Feed is an “all hands on deck” event with all club members expected to volunteer. More details on this year’s event will be available soon. For more information, please contact Geoff Faris at gafaris@aol.com.

Helping The FGHS Food Pantry: As part of our continued partnership with the Forest Grove High School Food Pantry, our club was able to fill a request for 10 plastic bins. These bins are being used to store winter coats that were collected by the school’s Renaissance Club.

Road Cleanups Return (Change In Date): After a hiatus by Washington County due to the pandemic, our semi-annual road cleanup service project is set to start up again. Mark your calendars for Saturday, March 12 (note date change), beginning at 8:30 a.m. at the Oregon Department of Forestry at 801 Gales Creek Road.

As part of the Washington County Adopt-A-Road program, our club conducts cleanups on Gales Creek Road between Thatcher Road and Forest Gale Drive and along Thatcher Road between Gales Creek Road and David Hill Road. Our club has been involved with the program for over 25 years. There is no better way for club members to honor Jerry Hoerber’s memory than by taking part in this project, which he started and served as chair of for over a quarter-century.

Evening Meetings Return To Thursdays: After listening to feedback from members, we will return to having weekly meetings at noon on every Wednesday of the month. Satellite Club meetings will return to the third Thursday of each month beginning in February. As always, meeting locations will be published in the Rototeller.

Forest Grove Partnering With Lake Oswego On International Project: The Rotary Club of Forest Grove Board of Directors voted to partner with the Rotary Club of Lake Oswego on an international project. Called Project Flourish, the project is based with the MAIA Impact School in Guatemala, which strives to teach girls, and particularly girls of Mayan descent, to finding their empowered voice and to embrace what education can do for them.

Guatemala has the worst gender equity gap in the Americas. This initiative centers on the creation and implementation of an educational program to connect talent with opportunity for first-generation “Girl Pioneers” (young women born into situations of quadruple discrimination as rural, poor, female, and Indigenous) in Guatemala. The elements of this program center on the following:

• Formal internships to generate experience and informed decision-making
• Preparation for university entrance exams
• Training on soft skills for job interviews and workplace readiness/success
• Workplace English & IT training to increase employability

This project creates a powerful pilot that will serve 42 girls and their families (approximately 336 people). These girls and families represent over a dozen rural villages in Sololá. Once created, the project will continue in perpetuity to serve generations of young women who will break out of poverty.

The project is partially funded through a Rotary International Global Grant. We will have a program on this impactful project later this year.

Online Dues Payments: Our club is now equipped to process dues payments online! We can now process credit card or debit card payments for quarterly dues. Information on how to pay online will be included with quarterly billings that will be coming to your mailbox or email inbox.

With the transition to billing with Quickbooks, some members may not have received their quarterly invoice. If you did not, please contact treasurer Lucas Welliver.

FGHS Community Food Pantry: Our club’s support for the Forest Grove High School Food Pantry continues. Thanks to its partnership with the Oregon Food Bank, food donations are still welcome but are of less need at this time. Of need, however, are toiletries and hygiene products as well as household cleaning materials.

The Food Pantry is open on Mondays from 4-5:30 p.m. The pantry is now open in its new site in the building along Nichols Lane between the football field and the Basinski Center.

For information on the Food Pantry, please contact Brian Burke, bburke@fgsd.k12.or.us. If you wish to make a cash donation to the pantry, Click Here.

Additionally, Rotarian Gwen Hullinger has put together an Amazon wish list of items that can be purchased and donated. Click Here To View That List.

Past Programs: Did you miss a meeting or want to go back and check out a program again? Most of our programs since May 2020 are archived on our club’s YouTube page. Visit https://bit.ly/fgrotaryprograms.

Around District 5100
District Video Updates: The latest video updates from District 5100 leaders are available online. We encourage you to click on the links below and learn more about what is going on with our district’s committee.

Update From District Governor Nominee Renee Brouse
PolioPlus Committee Update
Rotary Essential Enrichment Learning (REEL) Update
ShelterBox Ambassador Update
Vocational Service Committee Update
Rotary Youth Exchange Committee Update

Save The Date: District 5100 Rotary One Conference: Mark your calendars for May 19-22 as District 5100 will present its first combined Spring Training Event and annual conference in Seaside. The combined conference will provide Rotary training opportunities, inspirational speakers and a celebration of what is hoped to be a great year in District 5100.

Around Rotary International
Rotary Projects Around The Globe: The impact of Rotary can be felt every day in projects taking place around the globe. Here is a look at some select projects.

UNITED STATES
While jogging on Memorial Day weekend in 2020, Patrick Shairs discovered a holiday-appropriate spot for a break: the old City Cemetery in his hometown of Franklin, Tennessee. Shairs, a member of the Rotary Club of Downtown Franklin, was dismayed by the multitude of badly stained and unreadable headstones. That fall, the club started a project to restore several historic cemeteries in the area. About a year later, 127 volunteers, including members from other area Rotary clubs and students from local schools, had cleaned 560 headstones and footstones and 140 plot pillars, using brushes and spray bottles filled with a biological solution recommended by a preservation organization. They identified 81 people buried in one cemetery who were not listed in the town’s official burial register, something that would have gone undiscovered if not for their efforts.

CANADA
Island Park in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba, has been a meeting place for more than 100 years. In 2019, the Rotary Club of Portage La Prairie outlined a strategy for a phased, $150,000 effort to revitalize an area within the popular lakefront park, where the club also sponsored a disc golf course. “The club felt that we could rejuvenate the duck pond to its old glory as well as add new features,” says club member Preston Meier. Since 2020, the club has redesigned and rebuilt a waterfall, added fencing and lighting, and constructed a deck with a pergola for special events. “We wanted a project that we could get our hands dirty in and have our fingerprints on — a little blood, sweat, and tears in addition to the fundraising,” Meier says.

ENGLAND
After a pandemic-induced hiatus, an annual dragon boat race sponsored by the Rotary Club of Skipton lured more than 150 enthusiastic paddlers in September. Thirteen teams — with sobriquets such as the Komodo Dragons, Craven Ravens, and Rainbow Rockets — collected pledges and raised about $17,000 for the competitors’ chosen charities. Club member Andrew Gold noted that the competitions in 2018 and 2019 had raised a combined $30,000. The event was conceived by 2017-18 Club President Mark Ludlam as a tribute to his late father, Brian, a past club president who had arranged a dragon boat race. About half of the club’s 40 members helped steward the 200-meter race.

INDIA
More than 250 youths from schools and Interact clubs across several Indian states put paint and crayons to paper in a poster competition sponsored by the all-female Rotary Club of Ahmednagar Priyadarshini. The Freedom from Polio art contest stressed the “importance of taking polio drops to help our world get freedom from polio forever,” says Bindu Shirsath, a club member who was among the five judges. The club recruited district PolioPlus committee chairs and tapped Facebook and WhatsApp groups to publicize the inaugural project. “Since it was an online competition, the club did not incur costs except for making the e-certificate for winners and publicizing the results in local newspapers,” Shirsath adds, resulting in an affordable way to conjure creativity with a message.

Last Week’s Program: Robert Cheeke, The Plant-Based Athlete

Click Here To Watch The Full Program

Robert Cheeke is a New York Times bestselling author of The Plant-Based Athlete. A native of Corvallis, Robert joined us last week by Zoom to talk about his journey as a vegan athlete and about some of the information in his book.

Robert grew up on a farm near Corvallis. His father, Peter, is a professor emeritus in the department of animal and rangeland sciences at Oregon State. Growing up, Robert has just about every type of farm animal you could think of (except pigs) and was an active participant in 4-H. When Robert made the connection on where his “animal friends” were going, he decided that the production of animals for food was something that he didn’t want to support.

In 1995, Robert’s sister put together an animal rights week at his high school. During a rally on December 8, 1995, Robert made the decision to become vegan and to see if he could stick with it. He was an athlete in high school, participating in soccer, cross country, track and field and wrestling, so he wondered if he could get stronger and bigger without eating animal protein. Robert went on to attend Oregon State, where he ran with the school’s club track and field program.

What did he really want to do? Robert wanted to get bigger and stronger and not get knocked around in whatever sport he was doing, but at the same time he felt attached to his compassion for farm animals. He went on to get involved in weightlifting and bodybuilding and became a champion bodybuilder while still maintaining his vegan diet.

In the third grade, Robert decided that he wanted to be a writer. Eventually, his desire to write and his passion for being a vegan athlete came together. He has self-published four books on vegan diets and fitness. In 2021, Harper Collins published his latest book, The Plant-Based Athlete.

In the book, Robert tells the stories of 60 of the best athletes in the world, including the likes of Carl Lewis and Chris Paul, who have succeeded at the highest levels of their sports while subscribing to a plant-based diet. Carl Lewis, one of the best sprinters in track and field history, has gone on record as saying that his best year of competition came right after he embraced a vegan diet. The book includes stories from pros in endurance sports, boxers, professional athletes, pro wrestlers, bodybuilders, powerlifters and mixed martial arts.

In his research, Robert has found over and over that athletes reported a decrease in inflammation and a faster recovery time with a plant-based diet. Those athletes also noted an increase of energy and improved biomarkers. He notes that there are no dietary cholesterol problems in plant-based diets, contributing to heart health.

Club Calendar
Wed., Feb. 9: Weekly Meeting, Noon
Boxer Pause Room, Pacific University
Program: Craig Campbell, Oregon Manufacturing Innovation Center

Thurs., Feb. 10: Board Meeting, 7 a.m.
Via Zoom

Wed., Feb. 16: Weekly Meeting, Noon
Boxer Pause Room, Pacific University
Program: Steve Kilston, Astronomer & Inventor

Thurs., Feb. 17: Thirsty Thursday/Satellite Club Meeting
Time & Location TBA

Sat., Mar. 12: Road Cleanup, 8:30 a.m.
Oregon Department of Forestry, 801 Gales Creek Rd., Forest Grove

Sun., Mar 13: Deadline For Steak Sale Orders

Sat., Apr. 7: Rotary Scholarship Program Application Deadline

Wed., Apr. 20: Rotary Crab Feed, 5 p.m.
Forest Grove Senior & Community Center

Fri., June 10: Steak Feed, 5 p.m.
Pacific University Campus