We officially welcomed our Rotary Youth Exchange inbound student, Fareeha Nayebare from Uganda (left), at Wednesday’s meeting. Also pictured are club Youth Exchange Chair Melinda Fischer (center) and President Amy Tracewell (right).

If you did not make it to our last Rotary Club of Forest Grove meeting, here is what you missed…

This Week’s Meeting: This week’s meeting will be on Wednesday at noon at the Cornelius Public Library, 1370 N. Adair St., Cornelius. Join us as Nancy Boyle, spouse of Past District Governor Jim Boyle, presents to use on how to support our favorite district governor (that would be Jeannine Murrell, who will be district governor next year).

FOOTBALL FUNDRAISER – REQUIEM FOR THE PAC 12: It is time once again for our annual football fundraiser to benefit The Rotary Foundation. This year, we will use it to say goodbye to the late, great Pac 12 Conference.

The fundraiser is simple: you make your prediction as to which school will win the Pac 12 football championship this season. Each entry costs $20 with all proceeds benefitting The Rotary Foundation. For the person (or people) who correctly predict the winner, that person will receive the number of Paul Harris Fellow points equal to the number of dollars donated to their account. If there are multiple winners, the points will be split.

Sign up over the next two weeks with cash or check (payable to The Foundation of the Rotary Club of Forest Grove) to Lucas Welliver. To ease bookkeeping, entries for the contest may be not be charged to your account or paid for with the secretary. They must be paid directly to Lucas. Please contact Lucas with any questions.

Golf Tournament – Rescheduled: Due to the extreme heat in August, our annual golf tournament has been rescheduled for Wed., Sept. 27 at Sunset Grove Golf Course. That means there is still time to sign up and participate. A lunch and meeting for all members will take place at noon with the best-ball tournament beginning at approximately 1 p.m. Rotarians and friends of the club are welcome to participate. For more information or to sign up, please contact Tim Schauermann.

Let’s Welcome Our New Inbound Exchange Student, Fareeha!: We are happy to have our 2023-24 inbound Rotary Youth Exchange student, Fareeha Nayebare, with us now in Forest Grove!

Fareeha’s first host family, the Doerflers, have invited club members to a welcome and meet-and-greet party on Saturday, Sept. 2, noon to 5 p.m., at their home (information on address provided to members in the Rototeller). Please come out to make Fareeha feel welcome. If you have a student at Forest Grove High School as part of your family, please encourage them to come with you. Please RSVP by Marni Doerfler by phone or text.

Fareeha will stay with the Doerfler family for the first part of her exchange. The second exchange family is working through the Rotary application process. We are still in need of a spring host family. If you are interested, please contact Melinda Fischer at 503-502-6523 or wreathmaker@icloud.com.

Maui Wildlife Relief – Your Help Is Needed: This month has been a tragic one for Rotarians, families and friends on the Island of Maui. The fires across the island have changed lives forever. Our sympathy, thoughts and prayers are with everyone impacted.

As people of action, we can take immediate action. As we come together to recover and rebuild, we need to support each other. We need to Create Hope for Maui.

Through our Rotary District 5000 Foundation, a relief fund has been established. Foundation President Dave Hamil and Treasurer Sharon Amano will handle all donations. The Rotary District 5000 Foundation is a 501(c)3 organization and all donations are considered charitable.

A committee will be organized shortly to find the greatest needs for distribution of monies. Monies will be used to make the largest impact based on needs and will be sustainable. A single fund will be the most helpful over time to provide the greatest significant benefits.

Please consider donating to this special fund. Click Here To Donate To The Rotary District 5000 Foundation Maui Fire Relief Fund.

Stay safe, take care and mahalo as we Create Hope for Maui.

Mark Merriam
Rotary Club of Metropolitan Honolulu
District Governor, Rotary District 5000

Name Badges – The Rules Have Changed: With the move to the Cornelius Public Library, members were asked to take their badges home with them at last week’s meeting. Normally, we would fine members for taking their badges home…but it is now the opposite. Please bring your own badge to the meeting to avoid a $1 fine. All fine money collected goes towards the club’s contribution to the PolioPlus fund.

If you were unable to pick up your name badge when we were at Pacific, please let President Amy or secretary Janet Peters know to see if arrangements can be made to reunite you with your badge.

Changes In Lunches – Advance Orders: With our meetings moving away from Pacific University, we are struggling to find the right number of lunches to provide for our meetings. For the last few meetings, the club has had to pay for lunches that went unclaimed at a cost of $15 per lunch.

In order to try and mitigate these costs, the club is going to try a pre-order approach for lunches. There will be two ways to order your lunch:

• Sign up for lunch on a sign-up sheet that will be distributed at weekly meetings.
• Email treasurer@fgrotary.org by no later than noon on Friday before the following week’s meeting.

Lunches will only be ordered for those who pre-order. If you order lunch, your account will be charged regardless of your attendance. The club cannot continue to subsidize the cost.

If you have questions or feedback, please contact President Amy Tracewell.

Thank you for your patience as we work through this change in our weekly meeting location and logistics.

Concours d’Elegance Committee: If you are interested in getting further involved with the Concours d’Elegance, our annual car show, the steering committee is always looking for volunteers to prepare for the show throughout the year. For more information, contact Tom Raabe at 503-704-1200 or rotarytomr@gmail.com or Geoff Johnston at 503-939-7868 or gamsma@comcast.net.

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 (over 100 videos to date) are archived on our club’s YouTube page. Visit https://bit.ly/fgrotaryprograms.

Service Opportunities For Club Members
Do You Know Of Service Opportunities?: Are you aware of service opportunities in our area that our members might be interested in? We can advertise those here! This space is not limited to club-sponsored activities but to any service opportunity in the community. To promote the service activity, please send a detailed description of the project, the date and time, contact information and a link to register to Rototeller editor Blake Timm, blakertimm@gmail.com.

Corn Roast: The Forest Grove/Cornelius Chamber of Commerce’s annual Corn Roast & Harvest Festival will take place on Saturday, Sept. 16, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. along 21st Avenue and College Way adjacent to the Pacific University campus. The chamber, as they do every year, is looking for volunteers to help with set-up, takedown, trash collecting and more.

If you are interested in volunteering, please visit the event’s Volunteer Sign-Up Page to select your spot. If you have any questions, please contact Claudia Yakos at 503-720-8133 or info@fgchamber.org.

Forest Grove Oktoberfest: The City Club of Forest Grove will be conducting its third annual Oktoberfest on Saturday, Sept. 23, 1-7 p.m., in downtown Forest Grove. This family-friendly event is expected to be larger than ever with vendors, activities, music food and beverage.

The organizing committee has asked if our club would like to have a booth. They have also asked if the club would come up with a carnival-like activity to have at the booth. If you are interested in spearheading this for the club, or if you have ideas, please let President Amy know.

There are also a number of volunteer opportunities to help make the event a success. Volunteers will receive a free t-shirt and either a 2023 Oktoberfest commemorative stein or a food voucher.

If you are interested in volunteering, Visit The Oktoberfest Volunteer Page for available shifts. For questions, contact Donna Gustafson at cityclubofforestgrove@gmail.com.

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.

During the summer, the Food Pantry is open Mondays from 2-3:30 p.m. The pantry will be closed on July 24 and Sept. 4. The pantry is located along Nichols Lane between the football field and the Basinski Center. Click Here for more information on the FGHS Food Pantry and on other resources for those experiencing food insecurity.

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.

Around District 5100
Vibrant Club Workshop: Club leaders (and anyone looking to help Rotary grow) should mark their calendars for Saturday, Sept. 30, 8 a.m.-12 p.m., for District 5100’s Vibrant Club Workshop. Designed to help clubs grow and become more educated about Rotary, the workshop will go over foundation work, public image, membership and much more. Information on location will be forthcoming.

Board Leadership Training: District 5100 is offering a board leadership seminar this fall. This training is geared towards current club officers and board members but is open to any Rotarian who is interested in club or district leadership. The training is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 21, with time and location to be determined. This three-hour long training will touch on financial stewardship, club goals, action plans, management and much more.

District 5100 Newsletter: Click Here To View The Monthly District 5100 Newsletter

Around Rotary International
Rotary Clubs’ Free Seed Libraries Yield Benefits (By Etelka Lehoczky): What’s in a seed? It may be tiny, but a seed can be a powerful tool, as several Rotary clubs have discovered. They’ve created seed libraries where people can get seeds to plant in their gardens and yards at no cost. Now, those communities are reaping substantial rewards.

What they’ve found is that seed libraries do some of the same things regular libraries do: bring people together and encourage learning. Moreover, they increase local biodiversity, support endangered pollinators, and can even help fight hunger.

“I love the community aspect of the seed library. People come in for seeds, and they end up talking,” says Al Hayden, of the Rotary Club of Peabody, Massachusetts, USA. “It’s also an opportunity to show kids that tomatoes don’t actually show up in a little plastic baggie in the grocery store. Getting and planting seeds is a great family-bonding, screen-free activity.”

Hayden’s club donated US$500 to establish seed libraries at three branches of the Peabody Institute Library. The three locations distributed 6,000 packets of seeds this year. Other libraries operate on a smaller scale, like the Little Free Seed Library created last year by the Rotary Club of Wheaton, Illinois, USA. Betsy Adamowski, a member of the club and the executive director of the Wheaton Public Library, got the idea when the library redesigned one of its outdoor spaces.

“We had a beautiful garden put in, and we wanted it to be a learning tool,” says Adamowski, the community service chair for District 6440. She’d heard of libraries repurposing old card catalogs to hold seeds indoors, but she decided to put an outdoor twist on the concept.

She knew several members of her club had built Little Free Libraries: the small, roofed structures near sidewalks or in public places where people leave books for others to borrow. Little Free Libraries have long been a popular Rotary project. “I thought, ‘Instead of a little library, what about a little seed library?’” Adamowski says.

To stock the library, Adamowski and her colleague Courtney Tedrick got free seeds from the University of Illinois Extension Master Gardeners program. The experts at the Extension helped them to get an assortment that will increase local biodiversity, which supports the broader environment.

Adamowski found several ways to publicize the seed library and highlight Rotary’s role in creating it. When it was installed in the garden, she held a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a lunch for Rotary members and others. She also recognized the importance of getting outside help and collaborated with a local gardening organization. It hosted a seed-saving workshop and a seedling exchange and offered guidance about how to maintain the library.

“We were thinking that during the winter we should bring in the seeds. But funnily enough, my seed experts said they’re actually OK [outdoors],” Tedrick says. Seeds need to be kept cool so they don’t grow mold or germinate. So Tedrick has been bringing them indoors during the hottest days of the summer instead. Read More

This story was originally published on the Rotary.org website.

Last Week’s Program: Club Assembly

Last week was the first Club Assembly of the 2023-24 Rotary year. For those who are new to Rotary (or perhaps have forgotten), a Club Assembly is a meeting where Rotarians get together as committees to discuss and plan for the work of the club. For last week’s club assembly, members had the choice of joining tables to discuss community service, membership and an upcoming club booth for the Forest Grove Oktoberfest.

We also had the chance to induct three new members and meet and hear from Fareeha, our Rotary Youth Exchange inbound student from Uganda.

Club Calendar
Wed., Aug. 30: Weekly Meeting, Noon
Cornelius Public Library, 1370 N. Adair St., Cornelius
Program: Nancy Boyle, How To Support Your Favorite District Governor

Wed., Sept. 6: Fall Social Event, Time TBA
Home of Sharon Olmstead
There Will Be No Noon Meeting On Sept. 6

Wed., Sept. 13: Weekly Meeting, Noon
Forest Grove United Church of Christ, 2032 College Way
Program: Pete Bower, Update on Scouts BSA Troop 213

Thurs., Sept. 14: Executive Board Meeting, 7 p.m.
via Zoom

Wed., Sept. 20: Weekly Meeting, Noon
Field Trip To The Speisschaert Farm
Details Coming Soon