Jeff Mushen selected photos and Kyle Bergquist made them into this video for the Rotary District 5030 Conference. It will play silently during meeting intermissions along with videos from other clubs.
Volunteer Opportunities
Saturday, June 13 from 11am-4pm We will be hosting a food drive for the University Food Bank at the Sand Point Metropolitan Market. We will be working in hour shifts for this event. Betsy will be passing around a sign-up sheet as we get closer to the event.
Saturday, August 15 We will be participating in the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life in Capitol Hill. The event goes from 10am to 10pm–we will be walking in one hour shifts during this time. If you’d like to participate, you can sign up here under the team “Uni Sun Rotarians”.
Interested? Contact Betsy Conklin, clubservice@usrotary.org
City Council Member Kshama Sawant visits
Kshama Sawant, she of volubility and endless energy, became a city councilwoman as a dark horse candidate. Much of her support came from numerous random meetings with working and needy people. She thus became virtually evangelistic about their needs, the burdens upon them, and the widening disparity between the affluent and the rest of the population. In that regard, she takes only $40,000 of the $117,000 annual city council salary and allocates the rest to her solidarity fund. Her concerns entail several matters. One is that of the homeless. A bill to allow encampments on city property was narrowly defeated. She has mounted a crusade to reverse this ruling.
Another is the minimum wage. She contends (and who can deny?) that the $15/hour wage prices anyone out of decent Seattle housing. She contends that the hard-won $15 wage shall help, rather than inhibit, business. With purchasing power on the increase, people can support business by becoming more frequent customers. Affordable housing is diminishing. Corporations buy up affordable housing in order to raze the land for luxury apartments. She named the prices of both rents and homes, stating the fact that they are far out of reach for the working class and the poor.
She advocates a year-round female shelter. This would fill a need for victims of domestic abuse who would otherwise have to return home for financial reasons. Sawant also points to a regressive WA tax system, which offers corporate rewards but little or nothing for others. She offers quite a bit more of her observations and items needing action, including unfair city subsidies for large developers, the ecological consequences of Arctic drilling, the threats to labor unions, and hate crime.
Comment: A dynamic councilmember, with verve regarding several simultaneous issues. The fact that she enjoys considerable support suggests belief in her diagnoses and plans for remedies,
Debuts and Discoveries: A Success
Thanks again to all that supported this year’s Debuts & Discoveries Tasting Event. When all is said and done, we believe that the net fundraising total should be about $15,000 to support the University District Packs for Kids program. Well done, all!
We welcome your ideas on what worked well and what could be improved from this year’s event. Please send your suggestions to Nancy & Ed (nancybolin@windermere.com and edbronsdon@outdoorsforall.org ). We’ve already compiled some ideas and we will be looking for ways to further involve you and other club members to step up to make next year’s event a fun and successful one, too.
Bill Bryant, Port Commission President
Our speaker March 12th was Bill Bryant, Port Commission President and Seattle 4 Rotarian, who has long advocated a merger between the Ports of Tacoma and Seattle. The consolidation into a single seaport would keep jobs in Seattle. Some 200 thousand jobs are at stake in an industry whose marine cargo accounts for 1/3 of Washington’s GDP. The competition between the two ports has to cease. If cargo is divided between them, shippers would often decide to use Vancouver. Moreover, if each overbuilds to stay ahead of the other, the unsustainable result would land in the laps of the taxpayers. Note should be made that Elliott and Commencement Bays offer deep water that needs no dredging.
The overriding reality is that if one of the 4 huge merged shipping companies is lost to us, the job loss would be calamitous. Our ports are not ready for the larger ships and their larger cargoes. We must make ready for this, with limited time remaining. The merger would entail not only consolidating the single terminals of each port, but the necessity of offering four to the shipping companies. To that end, Terminal 5 is closed for the time being as it undergoes refurbishing. It is ideally situated: deep water, proximity of I-5 and I-90, the nearness of the airport (where Delta is to move its international hub from Tokyo to Seattle), and location at the terminus of transcontinental railroads.
Drawbacks to the merger, expected soon to get federal approval, consist of deficiencies in:
—Education. The appalling high school dropout rate and poor qualifications for community colleges leaves vital jobs in high numbers going wanting. Also it deprives people of the chance of a good living.
—Transportation. There is a crumbling infrastructure in regard to bridges, antiquated rail system, and worsening truck routes. If the merger is to reach all that it promises, these must be corrected. An impetus for us is that B.C. is seeing to its rail system in a tidy fashion. Then there is the airport. It needs to be greatly overhauled in regard to baggage, the North Satellite, elevators, escalators, arrivals facility, and replacement of the center runway. (Not cheap).
Summing up: From what Bryant tells us, this implementation is a must, as is the matter of expediting it
Bright Future with Reza Khastou
Our speaker for March 5th was Reza Khastou, founder of Bright Future & Basic and Transitional Studies, posits that our education troubles stem from two internal enemies. They are the unjust distributions of wealth and of knowledge and skills. Despite several government attempts at remedy, nothing availed. Moreover, appallingly low graduation and high dropout rates, mainly among black and Hispanic students, needed to be addressed. Other issues entailed, for those who made it to graduation, insurmountable student debt and inability to find work in one’s field. In many cases, career training should have begun much earlier, to wit, in high school.
To deal with these troubling circumstances, Khastou instituted the Bright Future & Basic and Transitional Studies program. Its aim: to make education meaningful to targeted students…to provide workforce education with hands-on…to have this work force education focused and intensive…to provide a tighter community that can focus on the individual. Case management is an integral part of the program.
Bright Future provides that students enter a college-level training program in the high school of parents’ choice. Credits go to both high school and community college. There is academic career counseling for either a job or further education.
Transition to a job is the ideal to be aimed at. Programs include Health Care Specialties, Cosmetology, Applied Math, Elective English, Social Studies, and more. Some scholarships and other financial aid are available.
Benefits from the program, already observed include:
–Higher high school and college graduation rates
–Close advisory system by the staff leads to students’ success.
–Unlike much college preparation, this program is practical.
–Dropouts often return and are re-engaged.
–Many benefactors have become interested.
–Skills can be taken anywhere there may be opportunities.
–Income from jobs circulates through the community and in turn aids the base.
–Social Security benefits are enhanced.
Comment: A vision whose results speak for themselves
Debuts and Discoveries: March 21st – Save the date
University Sunrise Rotary presents a tasting smorgasbord of the latest local beverage creations. Complementing these new flavors in the historic Sandpoint Naval Air Station Hangar in Magnuson Park will be the varied bites of five of the hottest new food trucks. Purchase bottles of the beverages that you liked best as you leave!
- 30 of the newest Washington state wineries, breweries, distilleries and cideries
- 5 new Seattle food trucks
For a full list of participating businesses, click here.
All benefits go to the University District Food Bank’s Packs For Kids program providing age-appropriate, nutritious meals and snacks to children at risk of going hungry on weekends when free or reduced school meals are not available.
And a Good Time was had by all!
University Sunrise Rotary capped off the 2014 year and began celebrating the holidays by having fun sharing “White Elephants!”
More photos available at our Flickr site.
Brightening the Holidays
Hi All –
To get everyone on the same page, I’m going to start from the Very Beginning.
A long long time ago, in a land…well, not far away at all…actually it was here in Seattle… I hung Christmas lights – professionally. Don’t believe me? Click on this link and you can see a little of what I did once… http://youtu.be/NCxFEG-SSXM?list=PL99E902F33D3935DA
Things have changed a little bit since that time. I evolved into a Mortgage Loan Originator, and operate within the warm, dry, confounds of Guild Mortgage’s Nortgate Offices. However, one thing has never changed, and that’s my desire to do whatever I can to help brighten someone else’s holidays.
Last year my rotary group, Sunrise Rotary funded holiday lighting projects for a couple homes – aimed at Brightening the Holidays for those less fortunate than ourselves. If I do say so myself, it was a huge success. Check out this video of last year’s work!
This year we are at it again. Sunrise Rotary worked with the University Food Bank identifying a couple families who could really use a little extra holiday cheer this year. Check out their stories!
Who Are We Helping??? (email from University Food Bank)
Hi Kyle,
I talked with the driver for the Home Delivery route that Catherine and two other families are on and she gave me a lot of good information. In addition to Catherine, there are two other families who live in the same apartment complex. Catherine has custody of 3 of her grandchildren. The youngest boy is right around 18 months old and the other two boys are in kindergarten and first/second grade. The driver notices that they do not have much of anything that she has seen. Catherine has to arrange transportation for her grandsons so they can make it to different therapy appointments each week. She also has shared that a tutor for the older boys would be very helpful because she has trouble helping them with their homework.
Hoa is another woman who lives in the apartment complex. She lives with two of her sons, I believe, who are in their teens.
Karen is the last woman who lives in the apartment complex. She lives there with her 18 year old daughter. The driver shared that their apartment is very sparsely furnished and that their dog recently passed away unexpectedly.
As far as Betty M., I haven’t heard back from the driver yet. I know that Betty has 4 other people living in her home. She has a disabled son who lives there, as well as her grandchildren and possibly a few foster children. When I hear back from the driver, I can email you any additional information that might be helpful for you. (I will update you all when I get updated on Betty Mosley)
I hope this gives you enough information to get to know these families a little bit. It seems to me like some sort of home furnishings might be appreciated by all the families in the apartment complex, as well as warm clothes for the winter for these families and also Betty’s household. The driver also shared that some sort of gift cards might be greatly appreciated as well. If you have any other questions. Feel free to email me with any questions you may have. Thank you for coordinating this for the Home Delivery families. I know they really appreciate it!
What Are We Doing???
A small group of Rotarians and myself will decorate the outsides of these homes as described in the pictures below, but more than the lights, what would REALLY Brighten these families holidays would be gifts. As you read above, these families don’t NEED lights, they NEED the basic essentials! …The lights are just the cherry on top.
If you are able and willing, let’s give these families a little something extra this year.
Let me know if you are able to “Gift” clothes, food, toys, gift cards.
Like we did last year, I would love to leave these families with something to unwrap, or go to the store with this holiday season (gift cards).
Please Let me know if you would like to participate in installing lights on these houses, or if you cannot do install, if you would like to donate something to the families. Email me directly if you would like to remain anonymous – your secret (Santa) is safe with me. ,
Cheers,
Kyle Bergquist
TINFA gets its first grant!
Because every child deserve a great education!
We support students and teachers in under-served areas of developing countries, through the use of simple and applicable technology in the classroom. |
That’s right, today, TINFA received its first grant. We are excited and grateful. Through this generous donation of $6000 from the University Sunrise Rotary club of Seattle, TINFA will be able to provide the equipment kit and the initial training to one additional new school in Guatemala this coming year. We look forward to a long lasting and fruitful partnership with the club.
Thank you!