Minutes of February 20, 2008 meeting

Peter Stam had a few announcements. First he read us a letter he received from Jordan Bryson, our exchange student who is currently in Brazil. She wrote that she had a very good time. She is just back in school form a two month holiday. She has a very good relationship with her host family. In March she will travel to the South of Brazil with Rotary and then she will be heading home again. She has a lot of stories and pictures to show us when she is back.

Also Peter received an email form Nicole Couwenberg-Warboys. Nicole and Darryl had a healthy baby girl on February 1st. Congratulations !!

A number of people that are heavily involved in the youth exchange have put together a program with everything what is involved with sending and hosting a youth exchange student. The program is available through Peter on a disk. You can also go to the district website. This year there are 16 students in our district (last year 8) which is great.

This evening we had a club assembly and also Mark Hemsworth was introduced by his dad, Tom Hemsworth. Mark came to our club to inform us about is coming trip to Zambia for Engineers Without Borders (www.ewb.ca).

Engineers Without Borders is helping people in developing communities gain access to technologies that will improve their lives. We believe that technology, when appropriately incorporated into each community's social, cultural, economic and political context, can drive extraordinary change.

The organization started 8 years ago and has currently 30,000 members. Mark is volunteering over a year to oversee a bee project in Zambia. There are 6,000 beekeepers in Zambia and he is helping to make the farmers more efficient and helping them to market their product. He has just finished 5 weeks of training for 50 hours a week.

He is going to make a blog and will send the address to our club.

Erik Tremblay informed us about the Fish Fry. He had one message: everybody sell tickets ! As discussed in the Club the silent Auction will have a different formula this year. We partner with the Woodstock Development District Services. They will collect all the items and will also sell tickets for us. Income from arts and wine is for our club and of course the proceeds from the live auction.

Peter Stam mentioned that club members should be nominated for incoming directors and incoming president.

Meeting adjourned at 8.10 pm