Just a reminder to make our monthly July meeting a priority. The meeting has been moved to Friday, July 11th with social time beginning at 7:30 am followed by the meeting at 8:00 am. Come and meet our new district 6250 governor Michael Kloss who will be joining us that day. Happy New Rotary Year! The 2024-25 year has ended with a big bang at the International Rotary Convention in Calgary with 16,000 participants from 140 countries. Among those were our two Changemakers Cathy Statz and LeRoy Kemnitz. We are looking forward to LeRoy’s August presentation about his amazing journey by bicycle from Rotary International Headquarters in Evanston, Illinois to Calgary with a group of like minded Rotarians.
On Wednesday, June 25th I was able to attend a Zoom meeting from the convention. Arthur Kanegis, Director of the People Powered Podcast every Wednesday at noon Central, took us on a tour of the Peace House at the Rotary Convention. This is similar to the House of Friendship at TriCon. Arthur stopped at many of the exhibitors’ booths and especially focused on those related to peace. Some resources that I learned about on the Zoom podcast are:
Rotarian Action Group for Peace rotaryactiongroupforpeace.org
Global Voices for Peace Globalvoices4peace.ca
Rotary E-Club of World Peace rotarye-clubofworldpeace.org
Rotarian Action Group for Peace rotaryactiongroupforpeace.org
Global Voices for Peace Globalvoices4peace.ca
Rotary E-Club of World Peace rotarye-clubofworldpeace.org
Rotary has 7 major areas of focus: Ending Polio, Promoting Peace, Fighting Disease, Providing Clean Water, Supporting Education, Saving Mothers and Children, Growing Local Economies, Protecting the Environment, and Disaster Response. 2025-2025 Rotary International President Stephanie Urchick is in the right photo holding a peace pole. The map below shows the locations of Peace Poles around the world. Find out more about Rotary Peace Poles here.
For our 2025-26 year the Changemakers’ Service Committee has decided to focus on Promoting Peace. We have applied for a district grant to provide a Peace Pole for the Elmwood Elementary School’s Peace Pollinator Garden in Zion, Illinois. Whether we are awarded the grant or not, we will start sometime after mid July to collect funds for this very worthy endeavor started by Changemakers Julie Zillmer, third grade teacher at Elmwood. Please wait to send any donations until we set a start date for this project. 
Julie is starting a project called Peace Gardens Global. Elmwood Elementary School is making connections with schools all over the world that have peace gardens. The goal is to: “foster cross-cultural collaboration, environmental education, and student-led conservation through hands-on learning and global sharing”. The Elmwood Elementary garden is accessible to the community. If you have other ideas for service projects please let us know. Also, we are looking for speakers for our monthly meetings from October through July. If you have suggestions please share them with our board members.
We had a fruitful 2024-2025, let’s make 2025-2026 even better!