Dictionaries for Third Graders

Pictured – Sunrise Rotarians Michael Rennie, Susy and Bill Allen, and Janna Markley present dictionaries to students at Painted Rock Elementary School.



Our Rotary Club recently donated dictionaries to several hundred third graders throughout the San Diego area in an effort to help in their education. This story was just sent off to the local newspapers explaining the project.

RB Sunrise Rotary Doesn’t Understand the word “NO”

Determined to continue improving lives at every age and income level throughout the community, 20 volunteers from the Rancho Bernardo Sunrise Rotary Club recently fanned out across area elementary schools to distribute free dictionaries to third graders.

Project coordinator Steve Redd organized the effort in cooperation with the SoCal Dictionary Project. SoCal DP is dedicated to providing free English and Spanish/English bilingual dictionaries to all third grade students in the nation’s public schools. “We are very proud to have been involved in this excellent effort.” says Redd when noting this is the fifth year the RB Sunrise Club has worked with area schools in this way.

RB Sunrise Rotary distributed almost 1,350 dictionaries – one for every third grader at 11 San Diego-area elementary schools. 120 of these books were Spanish/English for students who are primarily Spanish speaking. This money was raised during the club’s recent Freedom Ride, an annual event generating in a single day approximately $40,000 for Rotary to return to the community through programs like the Dictionary Project.

Children at Dingeman, Ericson, Hage, Hickman, Jerabek, Mason, Midland, Painted Rock, Park Village, Valley, and Walker elementary schools benefited from the 2007 program. Redd reports efforts are already underway to raise money for the 2008 dictionary campaign.

The RB Sunrise Rotary meets each Tuesday morning at 7:15 am at the Country Club of Rancho Bernardo, 12280 Greens East Road, San Diego, CA 92128. Prospective members are invited to attend these meetings as guests of the club.

The public is also invited to review the blog of Paul Gorman, one of the club’s newest members, as he traces his adventure in joining and participating in Rotary. It can be found at www.redbadgerotarian.blogspot.com. Another blog, maintained by club publicity chair Rob Weinberg, is tracing a year of a more established Rotarian. That one – entitled THE ADVENTURES OF ROB THE ROTARIAN can be found at rbsunrise.blogspot.com/.

The Rancho Bernardo Sunrise Rotary club can be found online at www.rbsunrise.org.

Speaker Schedule - January 08

This press release just went out today to all North County, San Diego press contacts: December 19, 2007 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE RB Sunrise Rotary Speaker Schedule The Rancho Bernardo Sunrise Rotary Club has announced their speaker schedule for January. · Tue, Jan 8 Program: Jim Flood-Physical Therapist · Tue, Jan 15 Program: Member Business Profile-Mike Moon (Financial Adviser) · Tue, Jan 22 Program: “A Homicide Case” – Gary Jaus · Tue, Jan 29 Program: Member Business Profiles: Rex Teets (Air purification systems) & Rob Weinberg (President of the MarketBuilding Team) The meetings start promptly at 7:15 am at the Country Club of Rancho Bernardo, 12280 Greens East Road, San Diego, CA 92128. Speakers begin their presentations at 8:00 am. Members of the public are invited to attend these meetings. A $14.50 fee will be charged to those staying for breakfast. The public is also invited to review the blog of Paul Gorman, one of the club’s newest members, as he traces his adventure in joining and participating in Rotary. It can be found at www.redbadgerotarian.blogspot.com. Another blog, maintained by club publicity chair Rob Weinberg, is tracing a year in the organization. That one – entitled THE ADVENTURES OF ROB THE ROTARIAN can be found at http://rbsunrise.blogspot.com/. The Rancho Bernardo Sunrise Rotary club can be found online at www.rbsunrise.org.

For additional information, contact: ROB WEINBERG rob@marketbuilding.com 858-673-9960

RB Sunrise Rotary Gets New Membership Chair

RB Sunrise Rotary Gets New Membership Chair

The Rancho Bernardo Sunrise Rotary Club has promoted Debbie Abel to Membership Chair, effective immediately. She replaces Paul Sullivan, who is largely credited for growing the club’s membership by roughly 30% over the past two years.

“Paul’s left big shoes to fill” says Ms. Abel.

A Poway-based audiologist, Debbie will be the first main point of contact for prospective Rotarians. “My job is simple, since the people in the room really sell the Rotary concept. All I have to do is get the right paperwork into the right hands, and help get new members settled into place.”

Ms. Abel has two electronic tools to help her that Mr. Sullivan never had. “We have one of our newest members keeping a blog of the whole experience of coming into Rotary” she says. It can be found at www.redbadgerotarian.blogspot.com.

The other is a blog of an established Rotarian who’s tracing a year in the organization. That one – entitled THE ADVENTURES OF ROB THE ROTARIAN can be found at http://rbsunrise.blogspot.com/.

“Potential new members are invited to join us for breakfast any Tuesday morning at the RB Country Club” Ms. Abel says. “We’ll be happy to buy them breakfast, and hope they’ll get to know us better.” The club meets at 7am, with meetings over by 8:30.

Member who's MIA

I got a call yesterday from one of the members asking me if anyone would notice if he dropped out of the club. Well, yeah, I'd notice, since I like sitting with this guy at breakfast. True, I can see him and/or his family at social events on the side, but that's not really the point. One of the nice things about Rotary is that you get to develop friendships within the room, too.

Anyway, he made sounds about taking a few weeks off to get his business stuff together, but I truly hope this isn't the last we'll see of him. That would be a big loss for the club.

always willing to jump into the fray

Went to the meeting this morning. 3 1/2 years int he club, and I still have trouble with these 7am meetings. YAWN!

Walked in, and Bill (the financial guy) is at the desk taking money and helping guests check in. But there's nobody selling tickets for the drawing. It's not a big deal - a dollar for one ticket, three tickets for $2. But there's nobody selling them.

Since we need to do whatever we can to raise money to put it back into the community, I jumped in and started selling tickets to the members who were already there, and those coming in the door. Again, no big deal, but whatever happened to the person who was assigned to do it today?

Anyway, we added another $30 or so to the coffers, so I guess it was a worthwhile effort. And then I got to take off my coat and find a seat.

Rotarians as political candidates

So Carl DeMaio is running for city council. He's a member of my club, and an email went out earlier this week inviting everyone to come to a "Get to know the candidate" forum. While I was told that RI encourages Rotarians to be familiar with the political scene in their community (which I agree with), I find it hard to believe that anyone running for any office won't use any public forum as a way of generating money.

All of which suggests the Rotary list is being used to raise money for a political candidate. And whether or not I agree with him aside, the fact is Rotary is supposed to be a non-partisan organization. By this action, I believe our club is endorsing a candidate who happens to be a member of our club.

It's a slippery slope from this to RI endorsing a presidential candidate who just happens to be a Rotarian. Bad move on my club's leadership, I think.

Training at PETS '08

For the third year in a row, I have been asked to come to Los Angeles to help train the incoming presidents of roughly 450 Rotary clubs throughout the Southwest. My subject is publicity and web site development - something that was never done until I started it in 2006.

It's a fun time - 3 solid days of work, lots of public speaking (which I genuinely enjoy) - and I always leave with everyone in the place knowing me and my hat.

Yesterday I met with Jim Roth to strategize ways to incorporate the Rotarians at Work project into my 50-minute presentation. I need to add one more slide, and may have to pull something else out (should be interesting, since it's pretty tight already). Perhaps I'll pull something from the presentation, but leave everything in the version that attendees take away with them. Hey - nobody listens to this stuff anyway, right?