Luncheon Speakers

The Club was honored to have John Smarge of the Rotary Club of Naples speak about the Rotary sponsored HANWASH program in Haiti (along with others shown above). John explained that the problem with donation-based single water programs is that it only distracts from building a sustainable clean water system for the whole country.    Instead, Rotary and a number of other organizations have created the Haiti National Clean Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Strategy with the acronym HANWASH. The objective is to create a sustainable system of water and sanitation which is administered by [...]

The Club was honored to have past Rotary International President Barry Rassin to be our guest speaker this week. Barry is a member of the Rotary Club of East Nassau, New Providence in the Bahamas.    Rassin earned an MBA in health and hospital administration from the University of Florida and is the first fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives in the Bahamas. He recently retired after 37 years as president of Doctors Hospital Health System, where he continues to serve as a Board member. He is a lifetime member of the American [...]

Barbara Vega is Director of Expansion/Foundation Relations with Cross International/Cross Catholic Outreach, an international relief and development ministry in South Florida, with a mission to advance the physical, social, educational, and spiritual well-being of beneficiaries in 28 countries on four continents. Ms. Vega has assisted in shaping development initiatives in hundreds of communities around the world. The department she currently directs generates over $2M a year to assist the poor worldwide. For the current COVID-19 crisis, she has successfully raised over a quarter of a million dollars for several ministries in Central America. She [...]

Andrea O’Rourke introduced Luke Lynch and Jordan Hernandez during our Club’s Zoom meeting: she recalled for us that Luke had talked to the Club last year when he was a senior at Boca High. He had been working on building a large metal fish trash container that would allow residents to be reminded of saving the ocean ecosystem by keeping the beach and walkways clutter free and putting the waste in the large fish-like trash container.    Luke then gave the club an overview of how this new “#coronacant” move got going. Hernandez, an [...]

Pictured above is Ken Romer, Volunteer for the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office (PBSO) and Club President Vanessa Havener.   PBSO recruits many volunteers to help the Sheriff’s office conduct services outside of public safety. Volunteers Against Scams Team (VAST) assists citizens of Palm Beach County who have been targeted as victims of financial crimes. BAST objectives include preventing additional victimization and providing assistance in recovering from crimes involving identity theft, fraud and other mainstream financial crimes.    Another primary goal of VAST is to educate citizens to help them prevent financial crimes and victimization. [...]

Our Club was pleased to have Debbie Vance of Vancouver Island, BC be our guest speaker. Debbie creates wonderful graphics as a volunteer program for Rotary. Her images are free or all to use. The Rotary graphics she creates can be found at Debbie Vance - Rotary Graphics on Facebook.  She also personalizes these graphics for Clubs, Districts and other Rotary organizations in return for their making a donation to The Rotary Foundation in any amount, for any cause and in anyone's name.   Debbie shared that she worked for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for [...]

Pictured above are a middle school student and Nicholas Metropulos, Executive Director of the Marine Education Initiative which educates and empowers socio-economically disadvantaged middle school students to preserve their marine ecosystems. The Marine Education Initiative has two core programs: 1) and education program for middle school students to teach them about marine life (called the Responsible Angling Program) and how to fish with a fishing rod and 2) fish preparation and donation program (called the Fishing Tournament Donation Program). The Responsible Angling Program includes: 30-WEEK E-STEM CURRICULUM Conservation centric environmental STEM after school programming [...]