The 2008 Jesse James Bike Tour brochure (PDF) is now available. See Northfield Rotary’s JJBT web site for all the details.

I am in Peru and and having the time of my life with the Group Study Exchange! 

We have been here for one week and have three and a half more ahead of us, have visited four cities, met with six different Rotary clubs, and stayed with two host families. 

I am so thankful to Northfield Rotary for sponsoring me! We are keeping our own blog of our travels… pathwaystoperu.wordpress.com

Left: the blog; right: the Flickr album.

From Sarah’s About page:

Group Study Exchange is one of the most popular and rewarding programs of The Rotary Foundation. This program has provided educational experiences for about 25,000 business and professional men and women around the world.

Visiting team members meet, talk and live with Rotarians and their families in a warm spirit of friendship and hospitality with the purpose of learning about another country, absorbing vocational and cultural opportunities and serving as ambassadors of goodwill for Rotary and their own country.

Both the March 2008 and April 2008 District 5960 newsletters are now available in PDF versions.

I’ve also converted it to a Flash-based newsletter for a different viewing/reading experience.

The Gates Foundation recently awarded the Rotary Foundation a challenge grant of $100 million to eradicate polio (see the press release) and clubs throughout the world are now involved in fundraising efforts to meet the challenge grant.

District 5960 sent a polio team to Africa a few years ago (see this 2004 press release) that included club members Charlie Cogan, Rick Estenson, Jim Pokorney, and Brett Reese.  See the District’s PolioPlus Partners Goal for 07-08.

The video is 20 minutes long. Click play to watch. Option: drag the slider to these segments:

• Richard’s arrival in Northfield: 0-4:40
• His polio story: 4:40-9:45
• Rotary and the polio eradication effort: 9:45-20:00

I’ve set up a club events calendar on a new Calendar page using Google Calendar. The events are also available on a left sidebar widget, and can be subscribed to via an RSS feed and iCal.

Use our Contact form if you’d like to submit an event.

 
Right: Charlie Cogan doing booth duty during an intermission. Click photos to enlarge.

After the morning plenary session (above left), everyone broke up into smaller roundtable topic sessions. I attended the CICO (Club Internet Communications Officer) session led by Wes Taylor, Public Image Chair for the Mankato Rotary. Wes is also the new DICO (District Internet Communications Officer). One exciting development to come out of our gathering: Wes and I are going to set up a Basecamp project group for District CICO’s to communicate with one another.

Of course, you can use your own newsreader/aggregator to subscribe to RI’s RSS feed, as well as the RSS feed for the Northfield Rotary Club’s blog.