President Linda Gerber called the meeting to order at 7:30 a.m. on the dot and called on Willie Steiner to read “Why We Are Rotarians,” followed by the thought for the day.

 

 

Sue Bova - The International Service Committee meeting scheduled for Nov. 22 has been postponed.  We will look to reschedule for either Nov. 29 or Dec. 6, depending on availability and preference.  An email will go out to the committee members to get input on which date is best. Sue Bova attended the District-wide Zoom call with International Service Committee chairs.  She will provide a recap at the next meeting.

 

Joan Borg – For the Holiday Sale, this year the only hard order deadlines are for flowers and greens – Dec. 9… for the final pickup day of Saturday, Dec. 11.  All other products will have set inventory amounts and we will sell until sold out. 

 

Katherine Peterson - Thank you for the wonderful comments about the 21-week United Way of Illinois Equity Challenge. Please stay tuned as we convene another 21- week offering starting in January 2022.  Feel free to peruse the Equity Challenge content, and reach out with any questions and ideas as we gather the list of participants.

 

Bruce Baumberger - Selling our Holiday Products - We are seeing a steady flow of orders for our Holiday Sale products, but we have a long way to go to achieve our goal of about $55,000 in sales and donations.  This is the week that all of us need to be making contact with past and potential customers.  Think about your friends, neighbors, members of other organizations, business associates, etc.  Everyone needs some holiday products – let them know how easy it is to order from you.  Just click on your affiliate link (evanstonrotaryholiday.org/XZZZ, where X is the first letter of your first name and ZZZ, is your last name) and the products will be delivered by you to them.

 

Key Dates - Our first critical date is Friday, Nov. 19, when our pre-Thanksgiving ham and nut products will be available for distribution.  We still have about ten unsold hams available for Nov. 19, so this is a good time to place an order for a ham that will be donated to one of our organizations supporting hungry families.  We will issue a club-wide email as soon as our supply of 24 November 19 hams is sold.  Customers with 11/19 orders will be contacted on 11/18 about pickup and/or delivery. 

 

COD Payments – COD orders will require a check payable to “Evanston Lighthouse Rotary Foundation.”  Arrange to get those checks to Joan Borg for deposit.

 

Shopify Website Dashboard - We are pleased to report that all members may view PAID customer orders on their website dashboard.  The development team will be adding the COD, PAYMENT PENDING order to each person’s dashboard during the next few days.  In the meantime, we will be posting a list of orders on our club website with daily updates. Please contact a member of the Holiday Sale Committee if you have any questions about our products or placing orders.

 

 

Chris Joyce – Boasted Linda Gerber for being the first D6440 president to sign the Youth Protection Policy letter.

 

Kristen Brown boasted herself, Barb Miles, Evan Girard, and Jean Saunders for riding in the End Polio ride in Tucson next week.

 

Harold Bauer – boasted Clarance Weaver (C&W Market) for the food drive he organized last week.

 

Marisa Naujokas – boasted herself for getting a new job at the University of  Chicago – Congratulations!  

 

 

 

Linda Gerber began the program by reminding us that she had three priorities for this year, one of which is to broaden diversity, equity, and inclusion and to fold it into everything we do as Rotarians. Our club is convening representatives from three Evanston Community Rotary Clubs to have intentional and commit to building trusting relationships and to create unity around how we show up in the Community as part of communities that we serve, not apart from them. 

 

We have been meeting every other week since February. From our club, we have Kathy Tate Bradish, who  completed this 21-week United Way Equity Challenge program, along with Neil, Clarence, Brian, and Charlotta. The three Rotaries are in communication with District 6450 and out of that, one of the members of our services and possibly two will be part of the new community.

 

Comments were made by the participants in the 21-week Challenge:

 

Katherine Peterson – led tour participants in the program. It was powerful and United Way provided excellent reference materials and many discussion points.  At about week 10 the volume of grim realities left many of us feeling dazed.  This may have been the shock of the first real taste of the relentlessness of an unequal world that is reflected in many systems that govern our lives.  Many eye-opening discussions followed and much was learned and there is much more to do. 

 

Kathy Tate Bradish – “So when we moved back to the United States into Evanston in 2005 I decided, I was really going to take on racial equity information and work.  And I know I'll never be done with that work but nonetheless, I was just shocked at how much new information that I didn't know about was presented in the 21 weeks of the equity challenge.”  And it was challenging but also really interesting doing the readings and watching the videos one of the many, many examples was about environmental justice and briefly shared a related story about environmental justice in Little Village here in Chicago.

 

Ann Searles – Learned how to handle uncomfortable discussions when confronting racism and other biases.

 

Chris Joyce – Learned the effect of daily insults people of color experience each day of their lives. 

 

Leslie Peters – We as a Rotarian group learned a lot about inequality and racism in our country, with the equity challenge the potent examples were challenging and eye-opening for me.  I found the wide array of options for exploring greater knowledge. Documents, videos, and interviews made the racism realities jump out.  I discovered many different groups of people of color still suffer tremendous bias and prejudice. The topics covered in the challenge ran a gamut of emotions for me, including sadness, anger, hope, and great frustration.  I encourage the club members to take the course.

 

Sue Bova - I felt the resources were excellent. We also expanded those resources by sharing books and documentaries that we personally read and watched, so it was a very rich sharing experience for me. What struck me was just becoming aware of my own unconscious biases and being very vulnerable in acknowledging them.

 

We then viewed a TED Talk video, “How to Overcome Our Biases?  Walk Boldly Towards Them!”