49 Years ago, Neil Macky joined the club.

 

Liz Smith is a Rotary Foundation Champion and will be honored at this year's district Meeting.

 

 

Jason announced that the winner of yesterday's speech contest was the winner from our club,  Taryn,  and she will be going to the Distract Speech Contest on April 18th.

 

 

 

 

 

Fran and Jason were fined for being late.

 

 

 

 

Fred is happy that he had a good time at the NE Leadership Training weekend.  He made new friends, learned a lot, and was inspired by the speakers.  The new slogan will be Create Lasting Impact.

 

 

Jason was happy that our youth speaker, Taryn, was awesome.

Liz followed up and said all 3 of the winners of the contest gave her hope for the future!

Liz also gave $20 for a fabulous 2 week vacation in Texas with family.  he mentioned that there were Rotary benches in a neighborhood where she walked that looked great.

 

Paul reminded us that the Hinesburg Club has a fund raiser that is "Pie for Breakfast" that is great.

 

Eric gave several happy dollars:  Glad Fred enjoyed the conference last weekend; speach contest was great; happy to have today's speaker here; and talked about his son's difficulties getting back to the US from Africa.

 

SPEAKER

 

 

Eric introduced our speaker, Jeff Alexander.  He said he met him on a plane coming home from Chicago and was immediately impressed with what he was doing with Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports.

 

Jeff said VT Adaptive Ski & Sports has been around for 8 years, and has continued to grow to the point where last year they had over 5000 individuals take part in at least one program.  He does a lot of outings for veterans. There is a wide variety of disabilities that they work with as well as a variety of sports. 

 

They have almost 400 volunteers that work with people from the age of 8 to 49.  

 

Vermont is second to only Hawaii in recreation dollars as part of their GNP.  93% of people in Vermont engage in some form of recreation.   Many people come to Vermont for some form of recreation.

 

This organization recently bought a farm in Rochester that has 125 acres that they are developing for recreation.  They are creating trails and are starting to build yurts for people to stay in.

 

Jeff talked about their fund raising events.  The Kelly Brush Bike Ride which takes place in Middlebury is one of them. 

 

He showed a great video called Outdoors for everyBODY which was done in conjunction with the VT Department of Tourism at the end of his presentation.

 

 

 

No winner today.