CALLING ALL BETHLEHEM ROTARIANS!
This is the week! Taste & Tunes Dessert Edition 2020 is launching in 2 weeks. A dedicated committee has worked VERY hard to make this years virtual event a big success. Within the next week you will get information to access the on-line auction site and see all of the delectable desserts and other auction items that will be up for bid. A big THANK-YOU to the 20 club members that solicited over 80 auction items. We will let you and the public decide how much that cake or pie is worth-hopefully enough to help feed some people who aren't sure where their next meal may come from.
Our Bethlehem Rotary Foundation & Northeast Community Center(NECC) will share in the proceeds. Our Foundation depends on the success of T&T to fund community grants that are being reviewed. The NECC has had to triple their pantry supplies. Smaller pantries have closed due to Covid19 and the NECC is now serving families from Easton to Macungie. Pounds of food has become tons of food - and all supplied by a staff of just four (4) people. It's just not a Bethlehem problem, it's a Lehigh Valley problem.
SPONSORSHIPS are truly needed. I ask each one of you to be not just a member, but also a Rotarian. Ok, I understand conditions may be tough and you cannot help financially, but many of you have great contacts in the area. Please reach out to business associates and tell them the benefit to the Lehigh Valley that a T&T sponsorship in will gain. They will have multiple on-line platforms telling the public they are a partner with us, and helping many folks in need. If you need help securing the sponsorship, contact Gerry Long, Deb Walter, or Pete Mickolay. We are waiting to hear back from some folks, and the clock is ticking. Remember, if we hit the $5K goal I set last week by 9/30/20, President Pete will buy the first round of beverages at our future in-person Thursday Happy Hour meeting. And I would love to include your friends who sponsored too! Thank you to those who have already committed.
At our Wednesday meeting last week on Zoom - Carol Ferguson from the Doylestown Club presented a program on why Vaccines Work. After talking about building bridges with parents in our community on the importance vaccines preventing 2-3 million deaths per year, she said that pediatric vaccination rates are down in the U.S. As Covid19 has demonstrated, diseases are just a plane ride away. And Covid19 has not stopped the spread of other diseases-polio included.
Carol is one of the leading forces in the Pennsylvania Polio Survivors network, whose mission is to inform the public why vaccines work. The group are all survivors of a vaccine preventable disease. Partnering with some of the most credible organizations in the world, they encourage parents to vaccinate their children, and dispel myths about doing so. She showed us a very simple card they use to help inform people on the importance of vaccinations, very simple that we could sponsor several thousand to be distributed to medical facilities in the area. Check out the September Rotary magazine for an article on Carol and the group. For more information, visit www. papolionetwork.org.
Since her talk I have been in contact with Carol on more information about Polio-Plus, and she told me about the effort to get residents at senior living communities involved with World Polio Day and the Purple Pinkie Race. She was talking about us spreading the word to area facilities like Moravian Village. One event is October 13 at 7pm as a virtual program from the Doylestown Bookshop entitled: "Passion, Patience, and Perseverance" A Discussion Comparing the Polio Health Crisis to the COVID19 Pandemic. And she just found out one of the panelists Dr. Daniel Wilson, PhD and Polio Historian, is a new resident of Moravian Village! Please see the story that follows below this bulletin for information, and please share with other senior communities. And District 7430 fully supports this program.
This week the Bethlehem Wegmans manager Jamie Downey will join us in our continuing business series of how the pandemic is affecting operations. I can only imagine the stories she has to tell from the peak of the shutdown when grocery stores were being wiped out of product through today and the struggles currently happening in the slowdown in the supply chain. Be sure to join us-this will be interesting.
See you Wednesday!
