Rotarian of the Year: Mike Dennis

At our annual "Service Above Self" banquet last night, Mike Dennis was chosen as Rotarian of the Year of Orangeburg Rotary Morning. A former club president, Mike was also recently chosen to succeed Mary Scarborough as District Assistant Governor.

About this great honor, Mike says:

I want to make sure you know how much this means to me. We have a wonderful Club with active members who are so deserving of this award so it is meaningful and a surprise to receive it this year. I can think of many of you who do so much to help the Club and community and want to thank you for what you do and ask that you keep up the good work. Getting involved with Rotary has been a blessing for me in that it has opened up my eyes to the collective power we can garner and the impact we can have on the lives of people we do not know and will never see. To me that IS Rotary!

As seen in The Rotarian...

At the end of a month which has highlighted public education issues in South Carolina, I was interested to see this in our Rotarian and our Rotary website

Rotary's Wide World of Books!

Participate in Rotary’s Wide World of Books and help a child learn to read!
LA2008 will feature an international Book Drive where Rotarians from approximately 171 countries will create a worldwide service project by giving a gift of literacy to the children of the seven Southern California Rotary Districts!
For many years, Rotary in the Southern California Districts has partnered with the Los Angeles Times and Reading By 9. This partnership will become a global initiative as every LA2008 Convention attendee brings a book to Los Angeles!
The donated books will benefit students in kindergarten through third grade in the Southern California school systems - students who rank among the lowest in the nation in reading skills.
For more details, see

http://www.rotary2008.com/convention_project.htm

NEXT MEETING JAN 2, 2008

Adults who cannot read or write nonetheless find ways to work hard, raise children, and run businesses; and sometimes, they find their way to literacy. That's the message we heard from Barbara Hilliard, who heads the Orangeburg Adult Literacy Council for Orangeburg county, currently housed at OC Tech. The County of Orangeburg is estimated to have a 37% percent illiteracy rate. The goal of the literacy program is to help clients achieve their goals.

Volunteers are needed. Can you help? Call ORANGEBURG ADULT LITERACY, (803) 268-2531.

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Taylor Garrick Has co-ordinated our efforts to adult families for Christmas. Thanks to the generosity of club members, the children in three families will find a few special presents under the tree this year.

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The Four Way Test

Of the things we think, say or do...

First,
Is it the Truth?

Second.
Is it Fair to all concerned?

Third,
Will it build Goodwill and Better Friendships?

Fourth,
Will it be Beneficial to all concerned?

In a surprise move this morning, president Bill Carter hit himself with a pop quiz on the four way test (can you recite it from memory?) which it took him two tries, and one generous hint from the gallery, to pass. Hank has agreed to take (and pass) this test next meeting.

What follows is a bit of the history of the Four Way Test from a Rotary website:

The test was primarily written for his bankrupt Club Aluminium Company in 1932. Herb actually gave up his job in ‘packaged groceries; house to house sales’ (his classification in #1 club) in order to join 250 other employees onboard the so-called “sinking ship”.

Rotarian Herb retold the concept of the test in his own words:
”To win our way out of this situation, I reasoned we must be morally and ethically strong. I knew that in right there was might. I felt that if we could get out our employees to think right they would do right. We needed some sort of ethical yardstick that everybody in the company could memorize and apply to what we thought, said, and did in our relations to others.

So one morning I leaned over on my desk, rested my head in my hands. In a few moments, I reached for a white paper card and wrote down that which had come to me – in twenty-four words.”

When a company advertisement was placed before Herb, declaring his aluminium product as “the greatest cooking ware in the world”, Herb simply stated “We can’t prove that”. The advert was rewritten simply stating the facts.

Herb’s heads of department belonged to different religions and all found no incompatibility with their respective faiths. Thus, the test was “for any man to take as arises”.

The most significant and practical example of the test in action concerned an incident involving a Printing contract. One local printer won an order from Herb’s company beating all other tenders. The printer, however, soon realised that he had under-estimated his quote by $500. Legally, Club Aluminium could ignore the printer’s appeals and compel him to fulfil his side of the contract. Club Aluminium was deeply in debt and had acted in good faith but Herb asked his board to reconsider and pay the printer the extra $500. Remember the second line of the test, he told his fellow directors, - “is it fair to all concerned?”

Club Aluminium’s future grew brighter and brighter and in five years had pulled itself out of the red. Perhaps, the test had real, practical benefits.

Read more here; another essay is at http://www.rotaryfirst100.org/presidents/1954taylor/taylor/storybehind.htm.

RING THEM BELLS

Members of Orangeburg Rotary Morning at Wal-Mart, December 1, 2007, ringing the bell for Salvation Army.

Howard Hill and yours truly.

Bill Barret and Brenda Austin were ready to put on that red apron, but Howard was too busy catching up with the two thirds of all Wal Mart shoppers who were his former students to notice.

Wendell Davis, in a shy mood. The Chief overcame his natural reticence to allow a picture to be taken.

Loretta Davis, GSE Team In the News

Saturday morning, while some of us were ringing the bell for Salvation Army in front of Wal-Mart, readers of the Times and Democrat were learning about Detective Loretta Davis and the GSE team to South Africa. Let me quote from Richard Walker's article on the Dec 1 front page:

DPS officer experiences more than law enforcement in South Africa

December 01, 2007 One Orangeburg resident and public servant found the people of this foreign land to be little different from those people here."It was the most rewarding experience of my life," said Orangeburg Department of Public Safety Lt. Loretta Davis. "So much happened, but the people of South Africa were so wonderful."The 41-year-old Davis was part of this year's Rotary Club Group Study Exchange, a program aimed at fostering learning between different communities throughout the world.The annual exchange is sponsored through donations collected by Rotary District 7770, which encompasses roughly half of the Palmetto State, said District 7770 Assistant Governor Mary Scarborough of the Rotary Club of Orangeburg Morning.

The visiting Orangeburg officer said she saw towns as wealthy as any here in the States, particularly around the gold and diamond mining towns.But there are also entire neighborhoods consisting entirely of fragile structures that hardly qualified as shacks. Some had only three walls, some didn't have that. For others, running water is simply a luxury of the rich."It was a life-changing experience for me," Davis said. "I always thought I was a person who was humble. Seeing how people live in South Africa, and to see how we live in the U.S.? And to see poverty at that level? It made me
realize how blessed I am."

But here's the line Wendell Davis and Bill Carter may be MOST interested in:

"It's changed my life," she said of the time spent there. "I may even become a Rotarian."

"May?"

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Also in the news, as usual for a sunday, is Howard Hill. No Rotarian in Orangeburg, and no student, friend, or colleague of Dr. Hill, will doubt his commitment to education, so his comments on the No Child Left Behind act are well worth our consideration. Let me quote from his conclusion.

A mandate is needed for involving parents in their children's education. The reworking of NCLB legislation must have variables to ensure that PreK-12 educational outcomes will eventually rival the industrialized nations. But the U.S. Congress nor the nation's president possesses the authority to insist that parents be intimately involved in the education of children. This is a major shortcoming that, short of a fiat, might pose a dilemma for NCLB.

The heavy lifting of U.S. education policy is carried out by children. This is an incongruent picture regarding a cultural revolution that is needed to revitalize U.S. public school education. Parents cheerlead for their children; however, their roles must be more concerted for advantageous choices and decisions on their behalf to emerge. This is certainly not requesting too much of them.

Rotary International and Gates Foundation commit $200 million to eradicate polio

Had you heard?

EVANSTON, Ill., U.S.A. (Nov. 26, 2007) -- Rotary International today announced a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that will inject a much-needed US$200 million into the global campaign to eradicate polio, a crippling and sometimes fatal disease that still paralyzes children in parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East and threatens children everywhere.

The Rotary Foundation has received a $100-million Gates Foundation grant, which Rotary will raise funds to match, dollar-for-dollar, over three years. The Evanston-based volunteer service organization will spend the initial $100 million within one year in direct support of immunization activities carried out by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), a partnership spearheaded by the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and UNICEF.

"The extraordinary dedication of Rotary members has played a critical role in bringing polio to the brink of eradication," says Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "Eradicating polio will be one of the most significant public health accomplishments in history, and we are committed to helping reach that goal."

The polio eradication grant is one of the largest challenge grants ever given by the Gates Foundation and the largest grant received by Rotary in its 102-year history. Polio eradication has been Rotary’s top priority since 1985. Since then, Rotary has contributed $633 million to the eradication effort.

Read more here.

For video and photos go to: www.thenewsmarket.com/rotaryinternational
For more information visit http://www.polioeradication.org/

Rotary Shares

Let me pass along this message from Bill Carter, OrangeburgMorning Rotary President:
We who have been blessed so greatly have the opportunity to share with those who have been less fortunate. Taylor is coordinating with the Red Cross to identify needy families with whom we can share. This year's theme is "Rotary Shares". We would like to know how many of you would like to help adopt a family by buying one gift, or even adopt an entire family by buying a gift for each child in the family. Family size range for one to five children. You can even choose you size of family. Please let Bill or Taylor know if you would like to participate and at what level. Taylor will make sure the gifts get to the right families.