Our Rotary Family in Action
Manon Mitchell
Our club meeting last Tuesday November 5, presented an opportunity for all our Rotary family to get together, take action, and have a positive impact.
The event was inspired by a friend of mine, Major John Lilje, with whom I served in the early 1980s. When I reached out to John several years ago when I was MC of the Rotary Remembers event, I wanted to hear his lived experience of being in today’s Canadian Armed Forces. I asked him what we, the general public, could do to support our troops and he was the one who mentioned writing Christmas cards.
I got to work and contacted our Interact club and, for the second year now, these kids have created the most amazing Christmas cards. This year we had about 500!
I picked up the cards from Lucy Choi (Interact Club co-president) and was amazed at the number of cards and the creativity of the students.
We advertised this club meeting as a card writing service project and we were thrilled that we had representation from our ENTIRE Rotary family.
Our own club
We had members who just joined (Ian Diaz – joined this year) as well as long standing members (Roy Boettger joined 1988). In addition 5 partners joined us as well.
Other Rotary Club
Dale Parret joined us from Rotary Club of Calgary Chinook
U of C Rotaract Club
Charvie Shah brought 4 other Rotaractors to help out
Rotary Exchange Student
Trinni, our exchange student from Chile was so happy to lend a hand.
Rotary New Generations Service Exchange
Elia from Italy was thrilled to help out and brought greetings from his Rotaract club.
With the 500 cards in hand, we got to work around 7:30 pm and finished putting the final stickers and addressing the last envelopes around 8:45 pm.
Of course we had our annual Christmas Sweater competition and had a few good laughs as we all paraded around the room! Warm feelings and good laughs were in order as we unveiled our club’s second focus area “Mental Wellness”. Knowing our cards would be well received and shine a bright light for our Canadian Forces personnel made us feel really good and grateful.
Check out
I want to mention a big thank you to Michael Colborne for sponsoring this evening event and the cost of the materials in support of the Interact club’s creations!
Our mental wellness begins with doing little things that help us all. This was a true reflection of “People of Action” in line with a cause so near and dear to many of us.
Thanks for all who participated. Don’t miss out on this event next year … you’ll come away feeling absolutely great! Here’s to the power of the Rotary family!