We’re in full swing for a great Rotary year!   July was “Foothills Foundation Scholarship & Education Fund” month and August was “Membership and Development” month.   I think both successfully highlighted what our club is doing in those areas and how key they are to our future.   September is “Basic Education and Literacy Month”, and October is “Economic and Community Development Month”.  These will highlight what we’re doing for our community and what other opportunities we have throughout the globe.

I love the energy our club has already generated this year!

• Major Donor gifts to our Foundation!
• Successful Peach festival! 
• Picnic on August 29^th!  Always a blast!!
• Building a garden for Learning Tree using funds from our first District Grant.  I hope you can join us on September 19^th.
• Polio Fundraiser following Chris Richmond traverse of the USA on his bike! 
• Football Pool Fundraiser to fund more RYLA students
• Preparation for a Global Grant in Guatemala
• Teacher of the Month & Student of the Month are kicking off soon!
• Amazing upcoming Programs!! 
  • CSU President, Tony Frank
  • CSU AD, Joe Parker
  • Sal Guinta, “Medal of Honor” recipient & renown speaker
  • Rutt Bridges, Driverless Cars
  • Shelley Walchak, “A woman’s fly fishing journey”
  • And … many more!!

Wow!  We’re only two months into the year!!  Woohoo!

Some important upcoming dates:

• October 3^rd, District Assembly held in Cheyenne.
  
  If you haven’t been to a District Assembly, I encourage you to go.  If this is your first, the club will cover your costs of the assembly.  Please let myself know or one of the board members and we’ll help you register.
   
• October 7^th is Teacher of the Year
  
  Note, we will not have a meeting on October 6^th, so we can attend this event.

Thanks Foothills Rotarians for being a gift to the world!!

Bruce

Our time on this earth is finite, and it’s always shorter than we think. How do we want to spend it? Will we give of ourselves to others, so that the world will be richer because we passed through it? Or will we spend our days, as the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote, in stringing and unstringing our instruments, while the song we came to sing remains unsung?

The glory of Rotary is that it helps us find a way to sing that song. It guides us on a path to living richer, more meaningful lives, by encouraging us to focus our attention on the things that matter — and helping each of us find our own way to be a gift to the world.

If we ask ourselves what characteristics we value most in our friends, most of us would answer similarly: integrity, trustworthiness, caring, compatibility. Our friends are not necessarily the people who are most like us but the ones who complement us, who bring out the best in us. That, to me, is precisely what we can find in Rotary.

Rotary is a way to bring out the best part of ourselves, and let it guide our lives. Too often, we spend our days in pursuit of the goals that should matter least. We focus our attention on our own achievements and our own gain; we devote endless energy to the accumulation of material things. Yet at the end of our lives, no one will remember us for the cars we drove, the clothes we wore, the titles we carried, or the offices we sat in. We will not be admired for the efforts we poured into making our own lives richer or our own status higher. In the end, our worth will be measured not by how much we acquired, but by how much we gave away.

Will we avert our eyes from suffering, or will we alleviate it? Will we speak words of compassion, or will we act on them? Will we be content only to take from the world — or will we give to it?

In the 2015-16 Rotary year, our theme will be Be a Gift to the World.

Every one of us has something to give — whoever we are, whatever our place in life. We can give our talent, our knowledge, our abilities, and our effort; we can give our dedication and our devotion.

Through Rotary, we can take these gifts and make a genuine difference in the lives of others and in our world.

It is said that we are born with our fists clenched, but we die with our hands open, and that our talents are the gift that God gave us. What we make of our talents is our gift back to God.

Equally we come into this world grasping at everything, but when we leave it, we leave all material things behind as well. Through Rotary, we can leave behind something real and lasting.

Our time is now. It will never come again.
Be a Gift to the World.

K.R. “Ravi” Ravindran
President, Rotary International, 2015-16

We are very excited to offer our members more hands-on projects through our Rotary Club!

So why do we do this, how do we do this and how can you be a part of the service needs in our community?

WHY do we do this---that part is easy!!  Service above Self is our Rotary motto.  We do a great job with so many service projects that tend to be larger projects.  We are hearing from our members there is also a need to do smaller projects.  These smaller projects would be a smaller time commitment and smaller in scope.  This would offer the opportunity to bring children (where appropriate) and bring non-Rotary friends who would like to serve in their community—and especially alongside a great group of people—our Rotary members.

HOW do we do this?  We have a wide variety of vocations and interests represented in our Club.  We ask that you think of an area that speaks to you and if there is a smaller service need that you email me, Teri Evans, with that need.  We can then let our club know of this need and seek volunteers to fill the need. 

How can YOU be a part of this?  We will send out emails as we hear of service needs as well as announce them in our meetings.  If you have the time to lend a hand with the need you can just respond to the email and we’ll provide you the details.

Another great area in which you can help is to be on this committee.  The more ears and more hands we have the more we can benefit our community and share the work.

Last week was the annual Global Leadership Summit and there was a discussion about service as a key component of leadership.  One of the take-aways for me was doing a 5-minute/1-hr favor.  They explained that we can often have a large impact on others in our community in a relatively small amount of time.  Their example of a 5-minute favor was to connect two people who could benefit from knowing each other.  That is a great example of a hands-on project!  The 1-hr favor would fall more in line with the projects we can become involved in as a Club.

Bottom line—think about what impact WE/YOU can have on our community.  We don’t have to take on more than what we can handle—sometimes it’s as simple as connecting people, delivering meals for seniors or volunteering an hour a week to help a child become a better reader. 

We thank you in advance for your interest in this and look forward to working with more Rotarians outside of our weekly lunch meeting.