October 5 (Rosie's) Tom Plumb, Hands to Honduras October 12 (Rosie's) Matt Dickinson, Mid-Term Election
October 19 (Middlebury Inn) - Friendship Breakfast
PRESIDING: Spence Putnam
MINUTES OF September 28th 2022 meeting
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Birthdays:
Mike Kellogg
Jason Schnoor
Wedding Anniversaries:
Helmut Heitzker - 32 years
Group Updates:
Sylvie - Brief Update on Iceland Trip for Planet Youth Conference
The Planet Youth Conference was an eye opening experience in learning more about the communities around the world and how we are so similar yet, different. It was motivating to hear about small rural communities in Mexico, Chile, Spain, and Rural America coming together to build thriving environments for youth through various programs and engaging parents. Everyone in that room, internationally, was there to discuss ways in which we as a community can make the healthy choice, the easy choice for youth through a nourishing, loving, and youth oriented perspective. Children should not have to decide whether to use or not to use substances – they should be in a community with support that encourages them to promote youth development and social connectedness. We know it is easy to focus on the challenges and barriers to prevention, but it was great to learn about the Icelandic Prevention Model in which prevention is possible through an intentional process. The process is designed to move past the barriers and into an asset/solution-based model to identify the possibilities and how to move the needle a little bit at a time. This was not an over-night project, it took decades to get to where Iceland is and to change the culture and environment. There are so many possibilities through schools, municipality commitment, sports, volunteerism, local health and human services organizations, etc to collaborate and engage with youth to make them feel part of the community and become thriving adults. This was an energizing experience and l look forward to further collaboration on this process for our youth in Addison County!
Rotary Friendship Breakfast will take place on October 19th and bring a friend! Please be on the look out for sample invitations you can use to invite folks. Target - 30 friends!
Spence / Gary - Window Dressers
Things are going well!
November 3rd-9th will need volunteers to help with assembly, cooking meals, and distribution. (Please sign up via Geoff's email)
The build will take place at the Rec Center on Creek Road.
Mike – Annual Silent Auction Fundraiser will go live around October 14-15
Please refer to emails from Mike and help gather donations for this years auction! Please reach out to Mike before going out to businesses to ensure there are no other Rotarians also going to that same business.
If a business would like to donate and does not provide goods/services - they can either give money and an item will be purchased on their behalf and will be recognized as a sponsor.
Please do not forget to ask the retail value of your donated item.
Jason - District Update
There will be an in-person training on November 12th in Lyndonville
October 24th is World Wide Polio Day - lets consider doing something and putting the banner out in town.
Sargent of Arms:
Fines and Happy Dollars
Fines:
Spence - Fined trying to fine Sylvie and having her present at the club meeting
Painting Crew ( Paul, Kevin, Neil, Spencer, Geoff, David, and Jim) were fined for being in the Addy Indy
Steve - late
Happy Dollars:
Spence - Recommends Patient Care, written by Paul Seward, MD
Nancy - Bob Zeliff: A friend from High School - Happy for a life well lived, sad because he died too soon.
Liz - Thinking about Rotarians in Florida
Eric - Tiger Football is at 2-2 and Friday night was homecoming
David - Spent the day at Shelburne Museum with his niece and it was a good day
Buzz - Thank you to Lloyd for donating film festival tickets
Helmut - Thank you for the anniversary reminder
Guest Speaker – Lloyd Komesar (Film Festival)
Lloyd is also from Rochester, NY and went Brighton High school and is no stranger to Rotary.
What is next for the Film Festival?
This year there were 138 films over the course of 5 days and that is a huge thank you to people like Gary who helped support this as well as other sponsors in the room.
How the festival starts - a deep dive on the timeline:
January - May: Filmmakers can start submitting their films and the screening committee will watch them all and rank. In order to submit films, folks either need to be 1st or 2nd time filmmakers for short and/or featured films. This year, the group received about 500 submissions.
This is a great space to create a level playing field for filmmakers with low-budgets telling a story. They cannot compete with high budgets and celebrities.
This year there were 80-90 new films chosen and then the committee add curated films and build the line-up in a streamlined manner.
May-June: The Committee starts selecting films and creating a program. There are a lot of great films that highlight family dynamics and struggles that are personal, but universal. Post-Covid, there were a lot of films highlighting home videos since people could not go out, they used what they had an focused on families.
A few mentioned examples include:
Substance use after a sport injury and changes the individual's life trajectory
Jewish Family in which the daughter has an upcoming polygamous relationship and this film uses home videos to walk through the history within the family.
International films about a lady from Nepal who tried to complete Mt. Everest and attempted to do so 4 times. This highlights the Sherpa Clan.
June-July - Lloyd and the steering committee create the schedule and there is a solid flow between the short films and featured films. Filmmakers are invited to come to the festival.
This year, there were 55 filmmakers who stayed with families and were able to come to Middlebury!
There were 2,818 tickets over the course of 5 days and 1,000 season passes sold
This is a huge economy boosting event for the community to bring in so many people
Winter/Spring - looking to host a winter/spring series and host films once a month - more to come!
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