Rotary friends, I hope that all of you have enjoyed the holiday season and had a chance to spend quality time with family and friends. It was nice to take a few days to slow down (and eat too much).
December brought me the opportunity to visit several of the great clubs across our district.
The Rotary Club of Kansas City has a great tradition and is celebrating 100 years of Rotary Youth Camp this year… wow! This great club is also going to assist with hosting the incoming Rotary Friendship Exchange delegation from Zambia this summer.
Liberty has a great group and is very active with service projects, district grants, and global grants. Their 11th Annual Butt Buster fundraiser will be May 14 at the Liberty Rotary Square. Proceeds will benefit youth programs, including scholarships.
Lexington is a cool city with a fascinating history, the Lexington club is nearly 100 years old.
Marceline may be known as the home of Walt Disney, and it also is the home to Walsworth Publishing. The Marceline club has a fun tradition of honoring students of the month from each school in town and they did that the day of my visit.
Lee’s Summit Sunrise/Sunset recently collaborated with the Rotary Club of Lee’s Summit on another successful Feed Lee’s Summit event, and this year raised over $87,000 that went to 4 different local hunger-alleviating organizations. This club has a great energy and does a ton of service projects of all kinds.
As we enter 2025, there are a few things worth mentioning. January is Rotary’s Vocational Service month. This is a good opportunity for clubs to give members a chance to learn about different Rotarian Action Groups that might fit with their vocational skills, to feature a few Rotarians in “classification talks”, or to present a vocational award to someone in the community or in Rotary.
Clubs should all have their 2025-2026 officers identified, elected through an annual club meeting, and entered into ClubRunner. If not, please make sure this gets done as soon as possible. All club Presidents-elect and Presidents-nominee are invited to Show Me Rotary PETS on March 28 and 29 in Columbia.
We are pleased to report that due to an uptick in interest and engagement from the clubs, all of the district grant funds for 2024-2025 have been utilized. There were approximately 32 different district grant projects that were funded or have been approved and will be funded for the Rotary year.
The district will be conducting a few projects in the upcoming semester.
We are in search of a chair and committee members for a new district Peace and Conflict Resolution program that promotes gun safety.
The 4-way test speech contest (Jennifer Rodgers will send out info later on this) will be a great chance for clubs to engage young people.
The district is working out the details on for the April Open World Delegation visit from a Georgian delegation, and we look forward to sharing more about this as it develops.
Shoes for Orphan Souls enters its 24th year. It’s not too early for each club to identify a cheerleader or team of cheerleaders. The Shoes for Orphan Souls Roll call will be at the District Conference in Kirksville on Saturday, May 31. That gives us a bit of time, but not too much time, to build our shoe collections! More information about the District Conference (5/30 and 5/31 at A.T. Still University in Kirksville) will be sent out soon. We are excited to hear our Friday night address on 5/30 from Past District Governor and Judge Duane Benton, and to see the specially crafted performance of Candle in the Dark.
If your club would like to get involved with hosting for Rotary Youth Exchange, whether for a short-term (summertime) exchange or a long-term exchange for 2025-2026, please let me know. We are working to build up the number of clubs participating in this program so that it can continue here in District 6040.
And of course we are busy building our Rotary Friendship Exchange team that will travel to Zambia as well as our hosting experience for the Zambian team this summer.
Erik McGuire
District 6040 Governor 2024-2025
Rotary Club of St. Joseph East
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