Micah called the meeting to order and Ed Woodall led our prayer and Pledge of Allegiance.
Welcome Guests
- Cookie Billings – Rotary Foundation Chair
- Heidi Norwick – President, United Way of Alamance County
- Brendle Leggett – Staffing Manager, Prime Personnel Resources
Meet Our Exchange Student – Pierre-Louis Guillot
Pierre-Louis Guillot, age 17, attending Williams High School as an 11th grader and taking a very ambitious course load with aspirations of graduating with the class of 2017 (his older brother successfully accomplished that feat on a foreign exchange program). Pierre-Louis lives in Caen in the Normandy region of France, a city with a population just over 100,000, where he is involved in scouting and multiple sports. He excels in math and physics and would like to become an engineer. Pierre-Louis will have two host families during the year.
Mark and Dale-Anna Cryan (see photo below) will serve as Pierre-Louis’ host family for the first half of the school year. Their sons, Sam and Phillip, also attend Williams HS as 11th and 9th graders, respectively. Mark is a former member of our Club. He is a Sports & Event Management Professor at Elon University. Dale-Anna is the Incredible Years Coordinator at the Alamance Partnership for Children. Kevin and Libby Otos will host Pierre-Louis for the 2nd half of his school year (not in attendance but visited our club a couple weeks ago). Their oldest daughter, Hannah, also attends Williams HS and just began her Outbound Student Exchange experience in Belgium, spending her school year there sponsored by our Club. Kevin is a Theater Professor at Elon University. Libby is a Program Assistant at Elon University.
Upcoming Program Schedule
- August 30th: Club Assembly – Rotary Foundation
- September 6th: Debbie Porch
- September 13th: Beth Powell
Welcome New Member – Lee Isley
Lee is a lifelong residence of Alamance County and works for Fairway Outdoor Advertising. He and his wife, Lisa, have been married for 21 years. Lisa is a Preschool teacher at Burlington Christian Academy where his daughter, Emma, is also a freshman in high school.
Feed the Hunger Packathon Update
Thanks to all who helped pack food for our Rotary Feed the Hunger Packathon. 51,840 servings of food were just shipped to Louisiana to help the flood victims. Your efforts helped fellow Americans!
Member Spotlight – Frank Longest
- Frank is a NRA member joining for the wildlife club benefit and in order to shoot his handgun (which he enjoys to reduce stress and frustration!)
- Frank’s law firm has been in operation since the 1930s and is the oldest firm in Burlington.
- Most recent book – The Bone Tree by Greg Iles. The story is based in Mississippi during the 1960s and is told from a lawyer’s viewpoint during the civil rights movement.
Member On Deck: Brian Dement
Laura Marx – President/CEO, United Way of North Carolina
Randy Perkins shared his sky diving experiences and credited his daughter with being the one to get him started. He bought her ticket for her first dive but she said she would only jump if Randy did it with her. That started his love for the experience and now he enjoys the “free fall!”
Randy introduced our speaker, Laura Marx, President/CEO of the United Way of North Carolina. Laura brings over 25 years non-profit experience and most recently led the United Way of New Jersey. Under her leadership, the NJ 211 partnership grew to a $5 million organization, accepting 400,000 callers each year.
Laura has the same vision for NC’s 211 system. She hopes to build a quality driven system that allows residents to connect to services via a 3 digit code 24 hours per day/7 days per week/365 days per year. The system will be a database for services and will be able to update daily. Lawmakers can use the data collected from the 211 system to help make decisions.
211 call center employees are being trained so they can effectively answer incoming questions. The goal is to create a consistent experience for callers so they can be connected to services the 1st time.
211 plays a critical role assisting with behavioral health and homelessness issues. They are developing relationships with local emergency management workers to be the public information portal in the event of an emergency. They hope to be a source of information for the homeless community and handle calls that are more human services related vs true emergencies.
Card Drawing
Julian Griffin did not draw the winning card. The pot continues to grow…
The meeting was adjourned and we all stood to recite the Rotary Four Way test.