Lawrence Central Rotary

Author: Admin

Lawrence Community Bike Ride Set for July 20th!

Ride Lawrence and our partners are excited to present our third FREE community bike ride Saturday, July 20th 2013 to promote cycling as a part of a healthy lifestyle at the The Rotary Arboretum at Clinton Park (by the YSC Soccer fields).

There are three rides to choose from and they all travel along the South Lawrence Trafficway bike path, a paved surface that is a “car-free” environment:

• Ten-mile ride. It begins at 8 a.m. and travels near I-70 and back.

• Three-mile family ride. It begins at 8:30 a.m. and goes to the Clinton Lake Overlook and back.

• One-mile easy loop. It’s available anytime between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. and circles around the arboretum.

Other activities from 8 a.m.-11 a.m. include:

• A Training Wheel Takeoff. Experts will help children who are ready to take off their training wheels in a safe and fun environment.

• Safety Zone. Safe Kids Douglas County will help outfit children with helmets and other safety gear while supplies last along with providing cycling safety tips for kids of all ages.

Lawrence Central Rotary organizes and sponsors the event. Last year’s event drew about 200 participants.

We’re really excited and want to thank all those who are helping us to do the ride this year. Our 2013 Sponsors include: Anderson Rentals and Lawrence Central Rotary

The 2013 partners include: The Merc, TeamGP Velotek, Bev West Creative, McDonalds, and the Lawrence Bicycle Club.

And the 2013 Friends of the ride include: Booster Print, Sunflower Outdoor & Bike, Lawrence Memorial Hospital, EconoLodge Lawrence, Ortho Kansas and Safe Kids of Douglas County.

We’ll have them there, but if you want to pre-print a release to be a part of the ride you can download this form, print and fill it out and bring it to the event. It’s that easy!

Here’s more information and Ride Maps. We look forward to seeing you!

June 12, 2013
Lawrence Central Rotary to Help Support Willow Domestic Violence Center

Support for Willow Domestic Violence Center was identified by the Community Service Committee as a project for 2013 to be recommended to the Lawrence Central Rotary Board. The proposal was discussed and approved at the March 20 board meeting.

The Willow Domestic Violence Center provides safe-shelter, peer counseling, advocacy and other services to survivors of domestic violence in Douglas, Franklin, and Jefferson counties. The Willow Domestic Violence Center works towards the elimination of violence in our communities. Therefore, The Willow Domestic Violence Center is dedicated to the empowerment of women and children, providing a safe environment; the promotion of equality and respect for all people; the appreciation of difference; and the social action necessary to achieve these goals.

Lawrence Central Rotary sponsored Willow for the month of May 2013. Items like soap, tooth paste and cleaning supplies were collected at each of the May meetings. The board also voted to make a $100 cash donation in addition to any funds raised to Willow to be delivered with the supplies. Rotarian Fred Atchison was the coordinator for the project.

Over the course of the month hundreds of pounds of personal care items were collected as well a cash donation.

We recently received a thank you from them along with this certificate of appreciation. We’re honored to be able to help!

Willow is truly a great cause and for more information about how to help the Willow Domestic Violence Center contact one of us here at Lawrence Central Rotary or go to Willow’s Website.

May 30, 2013
Curious about Japan and Today’s Japanese Business Culture? Come to our May 29, 2013 Meeting.

If you are at all curious come to the Lawrence Central 5/29 meeting to hear Japan Outreach Coordinator Erika Norikami from the University of Kansas Center for East Asian Studies who will speak on general information about Japan and the Japanese business culture today.

Erika is from Osaka prefecture, Japan’s third largest city and known as the country’s kitchen. She graduated with a degree in English language from Kansai Gaidai University in 2009. During her college career, she studied abroad at the University of Colorado at Boulder for 10 months as an exchange student. Outside of the classroom, she served as a resident assistant at an international students’ dormitory helping them with their daily lives and their Japanese studies. Since graduating from university, Erika spent time working as a global training and operations client coordinator in the English education industry then took a six-month course to become an English instructor for children. Through a grant provided by the Japan Outreach Initiative, Erika will spend two years as the CEAS Japan Outreach Coordinator promoting Japanese language and culture and conducting Japan-related activities at schools and community organizations.

May 28, 2013
Karin Feltman Discusses Medical Mission Trips to Lawrence Central

Courtesy of Karin Feltman.
Above, Karin Feltman, a Lawrence Memorial Hospital nurse, performs an eye exam on a boy while serving in Haiti on a 10-day mission trip, one year after a devastating earthquake rocked the country.

Lawrence native Karin Feltman told Rotarians at Lawrence Central Rotary on May 22 that she has a “heart for service.” Feltman, a nurse, has been on 15 medical mission trips between 2005 and 2011. Now she’s raising funds and making preparations for a medical mission in Nepal that she believes will last five years.

“I’ve been to Kenya, Malawi, Honduras, Haiti,” Feltman said. Every trip has begun because she was listening to her “little voice” that gave her a sense of what she needed to be doing to find meaning in her life. Now the trip to Nepal will be longer lasting because, she said, that while help with emergencies is good, there is a need for sustainable service that involves truly living in a place. “I want to work with wellness, teaching, and to improve family life there. “

Feltman will work through Evangelical Alliance Mission TEAM at Dadeldhura hospital in the Himalayan foothills. TEAM is an organization that has pioneered medical work in Nepal since the 1960s. It has grown out of a mission movement begun in the United States in 1890 by a Swedish immigrant, and has sent out thousands of workers.

Fund raising is important as she will need to support herself, which costs approximately $3600 per month. Several fund raisers have already been held in Lawrence and she said donations are welcome.

Feltman, (whose first name is pronounced Car-in; her mother was Belgian, she said, and pronounced it that way) is studying to learn the Nepalese language. “It’s difficult and very different from the romance languages common in this country. I do my best to adapt to the customs, the language and the food wherever I am,” she said, although she admitted to having a hard time on some of her trips with the native wildlife, primarily spiders.

She plans to leave for Nepal in January 2014.

“I walk by faith and not by sight,” she said.

May 22, 2013
District 5710 and 9200 GSE/VTT Exchange 2013 Visit Lawrence Central May 15th

Group Study Exchange is Rotary’s International Exchange Program for Young Professionals. The GSE team will visited District 5710 April 28 – May 28, 2013, and visited the Central Lawrence Rotary at our May 15th Lunch Meeting. The team is from East Africa and all are medical professionals and their leader Caroline Abeja Apunyo is Medical Doctor from Uganda working as a public health consultant. She is also Past President for Rotary Club Kampala South and Past Assistant Gov D9200.

District 9200 comprises the six East African countries Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The geographical variation ranges from beautiful coastal beaches (both in Kenya and Tanzania), to Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa and Lake Victoria, the largest fresh water lake in Africa. The Big Five – lion,

leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo – still roam our vast savannahs and bush land. The equator passes through Kenya and Uganda. The total population of all five countries is about 130 million in an area of 3,139,000 sq kms.

Kate Campbell and GSE/VTT Team Leader Caroline Abeja Apunyo

Caroline Abeja Apunyo, Group Study Exchange (GSE) Team Leader from Rotary District 9200, poses with her Lawrence Central

Rotary host Kate Campbell during the team’s visit in Lawrence in mid-May.

Apunyo is medical doctor with a specialization in Public Health in Kampala, Uganda. Since 2010, she has run her own business, ABJA Consulting Services, providing public health consulting services in Uganda and neighboring countries. She has been a Rotarian since 1996.

While in Lawrence, the GSE team of five medical professionals shadowed physicians at Lawrence Memorial Hospital and toured Health Care Access, Heartland Community Health Center, Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, and the Lawrence/Douglas County Health Department.

Below are scans of the Rotary trading banners the team exchanged with our club.

May 16, 2013