On February 5 the Potomac-Bethesda Rotary Club is having dinner at the Far East Restaurant at 5:45pm because we have to eat and be at Sophia House prior to 7:15 p.m. The timing of the dinner was set so early because (Chinese) restaurants in Rockville tend to be very busy around dinner time and we want to eat and leave to regroup at Sophia House by by 7 p.m. if not sooner. The address of the Restaurant is 5055 Nicholson Lane, Rockville, MD 20852.
For about the past 6 years, the Rotary Club of Potomac-Bethesda has supported Sophia House residents with occasional dinners and a unique program which, additionally, provides Valentine gifts--the most popular of which continues to be shawls known as Pashminas. The Pashmina's cost about $8-$10 each, thereby requiring the Club to raise about $300 for this year's gift presentation on Thursday, February 5, 2015 at 7:15 pm. Contributions in any amount will be greatly appreciated. For additional information or to donate please visit pbrotary.org/Page/sophia-house. If you wish to donate by check or contact us please click here. Thank you for your support.
Nineteen Rotarians and guests braved icy conditions to attend the social on January 29. Guests included Steven Grant and new first-time guests Erica Siebrasse, David Hilbert and Jan Casadae.
Here is a very easy way to help us with fundraising. If you are an Amazon shopper please bookmark this link http://pbrotary.org/Page/amazon in your browser and ask your friends and family to do the same. Whenever you start your Amazon shopping from this page the club gets a percentage. See the link above for details. You can also get to it from our website banner at http://pbrotary.org.
We now have a page which serves as a launching point to our club’s Foundation. Check it out at http://pbrotary.org/Page/our-foundation. You can get to it in three ways from our home page (www.pbrotary.org) : Look for “Foundation” located on the banner or under the menu choices “About Us” or “Services/Projects”. Besides evolving content and links to internal and external resources, on that page we can now accept online donations for everything we do.
President Caesar Kavadoy thanks Nabil Bedewi for all the hard work to implement the Potomac-Bethesda Rotary Club website featuring new capabilities to assist in Club fundraising.
Sergeant-at-Arms Phil Meade collected $85 in Happy Dollars which was $15 short to have him shave off his mustache. Let's try again next week!
RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards) is an intense 3-day, 2 night leadership training high school students who have shown a potential for rendering important service to their schools and communities. More than 150 high school students attended RYLA last year. Participants are nominated by local Rotary clubs and for these high school students, this recognition offers the opportunity to build self-confidence, gain exposure to a variety of issues and people, meet active community leaders, and learn valuable information and career skills. We need to raise $300 to send one high school student to this leadership training coming up in February. For more information or to donate online, please visit pbrotary.org/Page/ryla-interact. If you wish to donate by check or contact us please click here. Thank you for your support.
Guest Speaker Billy Painter invited everyone to come to the Washington Auto Show and 19 have responded affirmatively. The Auto Technician Development Program trains high school students by having them work at a licensed car dealership. ADEI Tech Development is currently offered at Montgomery College in Rockville and Marshall Academy in Falls Church.
President Caesar Kavadoy congratulates Rotary Scholar Will Todman for his presentation at the meeting on January 8, 2015. Will is from a very small village in England, and graduated from Oxford last summer where he studied Arabic and Modern Hebrew. He's now doing an MA in Arab Studies at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, with a focus on Middle East politics and humanitarian emergencies. He's currently working part time for an advisor to the UN's Special Envoy to Syria too. He talked a about where he's from in England, a bit about Oxford, and then about what he has been doing at Georgetown so far. Last month he traveled to north Jordan with one of his professors to help her with her research with Syrian refugees.
[Above] President Elect Bob Fuhrman (right) and Nihad Kaibni (left) have a "fireside chat" with Potomac-Bethesda Rotary's newest member, Monica Farmer. [Below] We welcomed back Past President Jerry Gross at the first meeting of 2015.
If you shop at Amazon through this link http://smile.amazon.com/ch/52-1264058, Amazon will donate 0.5% of your eligible purchases (millions of products) to the charitable foundation of our club. Thank You!
