Where to begin?

First, I am blogging this experience for several of reasons. Its a vehicle to get the word out, create some interest, and hopefully reduce the need to send out many many emails. Its also a learning experience so please bear with me.

I should start this blog at the beginning or reasonably close to the beginning. It involves talking about myself which makes me a bit uncomfortable. Anyways, here we go!

I am 61 years old and have live and worked in Rotary District 7120 basically all of my life. I studied Economics, Finance, and Business Management at Hillsdale College in Michigan. Upon graduation I was drafted into the US Army, got married to my wife, Mary Lou, and was rather rudely shipped off to war in Viet Nam. That experience was perhaps my first experience at service as, in off duty, we worked with orphanages. After a year and a day, I returned to the US, to home. We started a family (3 children) – my wife is a nurse and I began work at Eastman Kodak in Rochester.

I worked many years as a quality engineer and as a manager. My expertise was process and quality in running a business. I was known as a change agent, where I would go into a troubled business, analyze it, then lead that segment back to success by working closely with people. I helped to transfer our wiring harness manufacturing to Mexico, where I lived with my family for 3-4 months. I became one of Kodak’s first Six Sigma Black Belts (experts recognize for bringing about change through Team building, quality tools and statistics). I have taught classes to management and developers alike. Toward the end of my career, I was the quality manager for the Kodak Electronics R&D design organization, working on strategic planning and resource management improvement initiatives.

My service career started in Viet Nam. On return I tried community associations, church groups, specific charities. I finally found a “home” in Rotary – an organization with a broader canvas to serve on. I have been president of our Caledonia - Mumford Rotary Club four times. I was also the Rotary District 7120 Youth Exchange country officer for Australia, the District Youth Exchange vice chair and chairperson for six years, Group Study Exchange (GSE) District Coordinator for 4-5 years, Chair of the District 7120 Governor Nominating committee, and a bunch of other offices along the way. Our first exchange student (of many) to live with us in 1989 was Wendy Perry (Hardy) from South Africa. She came to visit us with her daughter, sister, brother & his wife in 2003. Mary Lou and I visited her in SA for a month in 2004. Stella and the Group Study Exchange Team from D9210 visited in 2005 and now we are working on this wonderful grant with D9210. This progression is no accident…its Rotary!
My other interests are genealogy, babysitting my 8 grand kids (two of them everyday), gardening, music, nature, and I am an avid golfer.

The Grant

As I inferred, this grant is linked to the Group Study Exchange team in 2005. We sent a team to Africa. The team leader of the from African was Stella Dongo from the Harare Highlands Rotary Club. We all loved Stella - a woman with charm and heart and a wonderful smile and laugh. A friend of hers from the Denver Mile High Rotary Club called me (because I was the District GSE Coordinator) and asked if she could please visit her friend Stella. This person is Carolyn Schrader. She had worked on a few small projects (grants) through Rotary in Zimbabwe. I of course said yes, come visit. Through Stella, Carolyn and I became friends.

In August of 2008, Carolyn emailed me and asked if the Caledonia-Mumford Rotary Club would like to make a small contribution to a 3H Grant (Health, Hunger, Humanity). These are the largest and most expansive grants in Rotary. She emailed and explained the grant to a degree. It sounded perfect! I asked for more information, which Carolyn sent. I forwarded this to Mahendra Shah (who has experience with grants and is a key member of the Grants committee for our Rotary district) and Don Alhart who chairs our District 7120 Rotary Foundation Committee. I asked if they wanted to participant. Basically, they asked if we could become full partners. WOW!

I called Carolyn and we had an on-phone celebration! This partnership on the grant meant that our district would pay half of the upfront sponsor funds and would surely share the work load. The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International then takes this upfront sponsor funding and matches it 10 X IF THEY APPROVE THE GRANT (A big "if" at that point in time, around mid-September).

Next blog will be "More of the Beginning"