Club Years 1991 – 2000

2001-2002, Marcus Wulf

2001

Theme: Mankind Is Our Business

Rotary’s theme was “Mankind Is Our Business,” and we certainly went about that business! Internationally, Polio Plus continued to be successful with fewer than 600 reported cases (down from 350,000 in the late 1980s). The plan is to celebrate the worldwide eradication of polio at the 100th anniversary Rotary Convention in Chicago in 2005. We also contributed $3,500 to World Community Service Projects in Central America and had three of our members travel to Honduras to view various programs that we have helped fund and to look for needs we might fund in the future. Global Quest was a major international push for membership growth and we led District 5100 with about 30 new members, growing to more than 200 strong.

Locally, the area Rotary Food Drive received 273,000 pounds of food and over $33,000 to support Marion-Polk Food Share. Our club donated over $30,000 to various causes, such as Reading Is Fundamental, the dictionary program, Mid-Valley Women’s Crisis Center and The Children’s Guild, and we bought a fence for the Richmond School’s playground.

We sponsored an outstanding young woman Celeste Williams for an exchange to Sapporo, Japan. She is fluent in Japanese and has already entertained the club on one of her Japanese instruments. Three young leaders are headed to RYLA. We are making a difference in our community!

Our own Salem Rotary Foundation had an outstanding year, helped by a $10,000 bequest by former Rotarian Russ Bogart. Our foundation grew to more than $150,000 and contributed about $12,000 to Girl Scouts, Richmond Soccer, Easter Seals Children’s Guild, Chemeketa Community College Foundation’s Puente’s Scholarship, and others.

A successful auction, held in May, netted almost $50,000 to fund next year’s Good Works projects. Our district-leading Rotogram is emailed to most of our members now. Indeed, Mankind Is Our Business!

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2002-2003, Larry Gray

2002

Theme: Sow the Seeds of Love

This was the year intended to be the final push to eradicate polio. Rotary Club of Salem played an important part, raising $31,000 for polio eradication, exceeding our goal by $6,000, thanks to Past President Terry McDonald’s committee. Our international service did not end there. We raised nearly $15,000 for the Rotary International Foundation, exceeding our goal by $5,000. We revived our international Youth Exchange program by sending two students, Kellen and Bria Obendorf, on Rotary’s new summer short – term exchange and agreeing to host a student from Japan.

Our community service effort was fueled by the prior year’s successful auction. We provided $10,000 for SKY- Ball and $26,500 for POWER after-school activities for middle school students. Our major project for next year will be Northwest Medical Teams dental van visits, health fairs and immunization clinics at low-income schools. To fund that project we raised nearly $45,000 through a new method – a raffle. Our Salem Rotary Foundation made $3,800 in grants to five local children’s programs.

For the first time, our new Rotarians from the year formed the Service Day Committee and organized an all-Club hands-on project to spruce up the Southeast Neighborhood Community Center. Another hands-on project involved built a pond and removed non-native vegetation at the Audubon Sanctuary. Our Literacy Committee launched a program to provide books to kids in homeless shelter and received a $3,000 grant from Starbucks to help pay for it. We arranged to send a record seven young people to RYLA camp. At Christmas, members gave several hundred Tree of Joy gifts and $6,579 to the Salvation Army kettle during our December meeting at the Elsinore. The Vocational Service Award went to Mike McLaran, and we gave awards to two teachers for their vocational service.

Our Fellowship Committee arranged a tour of covered bridges, a social before the Oregon Symphony concert, and a TGIF social. Our club has one of the finest newsletters in all of Rotary, and Tim Nissen this year added photographs to make it even better.

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2003-2004, Ted Stang

2003

Theme: Lend a Hand

We commenced this Rotary year in July with the presentation of three specific grants. The first was $10,000 to the Marion County Health Department to fund health fairs and immunization clinics. A $15,000 gift was provided to Northwest Medical Teams to assure 11 free mobile dental clinics for local youth. Lastly, a $10,000 grant was presented to Salem-Keizer School District in support of the POWER after-school program. Salem Mayor Janet Taylor specifically recognized our efforts in the POWER program. In addition, the board was able to respond to other community needs with grants to: AC Gilbert Discovery village, Operation Hungry Child, Reading is Fundamental, Salem Boys Choir, Special Olympics, and our Ambassadorial Scholar. Thanks to raffle co- chairs Teresa Lulay and Tim Cowan for leading our successful fund raising effort. Carolyn Gorsuch and Mark Wulf were key in securing approval for this club’s Rotary Centennial Project. By February 2005, Rotary Club of Salem members will have participated in the construction of a pavilion for picnicking in Salem’s Riverfront Park.

International Service programs remained high profile and quite active. We sent two students on Rotary short-term exchanges as well as an outbound exchange student to Guatemala. It was also most enjoyable hosting this year’s inbound Japanese exchange student, Noriko Nakagami. Throughout the year, she lived with the families of Lavinia Goto, Warren Bednarz, Mark Wulf and Warren Griffin, while completing a year of study at South Salem High School.

We continued our traditions of providing hundreds of Tree of Joy gifts and $6,649 to the Salvation Army kettle during a December meeting. Members also assisted the Salvation Army by “ringing the bell” at various Salem locations. We conducted another successful Service Day project at the Southeast Neighborhood Community Center as well as a Preserve Planet Earth work project at West Salem’s Audubon Park. In addition, three local young people were provided the opportunity to attend RYLA Camp.

The vocational service award recipient was Ron Kelemen as we focused on his excellent work in mentoring youngsters. For the 14th consecutive year, we participated in the Rotary Workplace Food Drive. Our club was directly responsible for generating 168,002 pounds of food and $30,895 in gifts to Marion-Polk Food Share.

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2004-2005, Carolyn Gorsuch

2004

Theme: Celebrate Rotary | 100 Years

Members by Roster count, June ’04: total 190 (148 men, 42 women); includes 4 Honorary
Rotary International celebrated its 100th Anniversary on February 23, 2005, and Rotary Club of Salem realized 85 years in September 2004. Did we stop there? No! We were only inspired to accomplish more, and that we did. With 43 committees ready and willing, there was always a flurry of activity going on. As a Centennial Commemoration, Rotary Club of Salem built a 1,764 square feet open-air pavilion in Salem Riverfront Park, which was donated to the City of Salem upon completion.

2004a

Many dedicated Rotarians have spent two years on this project with over 100 local businesses and individuals joining in to contribute to the facility. Our annual Raffle netted over $30,000 to help fund the pavilion and other youth programs in our community. To further celebrate our 100th anniversary, each week a “Centennial Moment” was read at the meeting, and published in our bi-weekly Rotogram to share Rotary’s history with the membership.

2004b

After many previous attempts, two Interact Clubs were successfully established at North and South Salem High Schools. Our club members also participated in the “No Meth, Not In My Neighborhood.” program to help eradicate crystal-meth addiction.

The Marion-Polk Food Share Drive Committee reached their goal of 360,000 lbs. of food and surpassed their $36,000 monetary goal by $2,300. Other successful committees were the Salvation Army Bell Ringing, Tree of Joy Gift Drive, Youth Literacy, Earth Day and Service Day.

Our Youth Exchange Program was a highlight this year with hosting a Benjamin Nordurft from Germany, sponsoring an outbound student to Guatemala named Reese McCulley, and hosting a short-term exchange student from France. Additionally, we sponsored an Ambassadorial Scholar to Spain. Monthly, we honored two high school students from North and South Salem High Schools and they each contributed to the Earth Day Program in May. In June, Rotary Club of Salem members hosted five couples on a Friendship Exchange from England for five days; plus we joined other local clubs in purchasing an ambulance that went to Guatemala. Our Paul Harris contributions reached a goal of $20,000, plus donations to the Salem Rotary Foundation.

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2005-2006, Spencer Taylor

2005
Theme: Service Above Self

In this 101st year of Rotary International, Rotary International, and Rotary Club of Salem returned to an emphasis of the original theme of Rotary, “Service Above Self.” By emphasizing the Internationality of Rotary Membership this year, our club has shown that Rotary’s goodwill is not limited to local action alone or to those who are already in the club, but instead extends to the far reaches of the globe and welcomes new members who share Rotary’s ideals.

Rotary Club of Salem received numerous awards recognizing our club’s international and local service. These included the Zone 23 and District 5100 Literacy Awards, the District 5100 World Community Service Award (with special club-led projects in both Ghana and the Dominican Republic). As well, recognition for having the #2 Paul Harris Drive in District 5100 ($23,500.00 to continue the Polio Eradication effort that is near completion), and District 5100’s Presidential Citation (for membership growth, service projects, and foundation contributions). Several of these awards are unprecedented in our club, particularly the Zone 23 Literacy Award and the World Community Service Award (because before this year we had not led a project as a club). Zone 23 of Rotary International covers a 5-state region, including California, a state that by itself would be the world’s 7th largest country. Our club’s literacy leaders deserved the recognition both this year and in prior years as well.

Clau Vargas, our club’s inbound youth exchange student from Mexico impressed us with her friendliness, maturity, openness to new things and with a 4.00GPA at South Salem High School (an achievement that is almost unheard of for an exchange student). Bryn Silverman, our outbound youth exchange student to Guatemala has regaled us with her e-mailed stories, experiences, and her progress.

Our club welcomes 31 new members in 2005-06. These outstanding new members have become involved in our club’s committees and directly in our club’s key fundraiser, the Raffle Ticket Sales. Furthermore, our club adopted what we hope will be our “signature event” after over 85 years of not having one. The First Annual Salem Rotary President’s Ball, a black tie formal event, took place with 182 people in attendance on June 3rd at the new Salem Conference Center. The President’s Ball celebrated our club’s support of our incoming Club President and our Raffle Drive. We yielded approximately $54,000 in Raffle Sales and at the President’s Ball; we had $4,900 in Event Sponsorships, $6,200 in

Premier Auction proceeds, and $1,800 in our Interact Club’s Diamond Raffle Ticket Sales. These funds have funded our major Good Works Project, the Teen Court Program, which has an amazing record of accomplishment of a 66% reduction in the repeat crime rate among first time youth offenders.
Our club also welcomed several outstanding programs this year including former Miss America/Miss Oregon Katie Harman, former Governor John Kitzhaber, former Governor Barbara Roberts, and former Secretaries of State Phil Keisling and Norma Paulus.

Our club made several important decisions this year, including adopting the President’s Ball as our signature event, refining our Raffle Ticket Sales effort, a significant re-structuring of our board, and the decision to return to our historic meeting site, which is now the new Salem Conference Center. The Mission Mill served our club well for 3 years, but ultimately, the board, after considering the results of a club-wide survey, decided that our future was best served by returning to the core of Salem’s downtown business district.

Rotary International’s core values are service, friendship, honor, and doing business with service-minded people. Salem Rotary and Rotary International have commenced the second century of “Service Above Self” with these core values still guiding our vision.

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2006-2007, Lois Mulrooney

2006
Theme: Lead the Way

Salem Rotary took to heart the international Rotary theme of “Lead the Way” and made outstanding strides during this Rotary year. Three projects were funded through the $30,000 proceeds of the club’s raffle. Marion-Polk Food Share, Head Start, and No Meth-Not In My Neighborhood all received a share of the proceeds to improve their services to their clients and provide much-needed services to the community. In addition to the grant to Marion-Polk Food Share, the club once again took part in the Food Share Drive. In its 17th year of participation, club members raised $10,684 plus 70,000 pound of food.

Giving to community projects did not end there. Thirty-eight Rotarians and their family members staffed kettles for three days during the Salvation Army Kettle Drive and at the club’s December, “Kettle Day” donated more than $4,600. In addition, the Salem Rotary Foundation gave grants totaling $10,400 to Chemeketa Community College, A.C. Gilbert’s Discovery Village, Liberty House, YWCA, and South Salem High School. Providing the sweat equity to help fund these grants and projects, Salem Rotarians once again staffed the Elephant Ear booth at the Salem Art Fair. The triple-digit heat made it next to impossible to sell any food items that were hot, but water and soda were hard to keep in stock.

The club’s Youth Literacy Committee continued its exceptional work, receiving the District 5100 Zone Award for the second year in a row. In addition to distributing books to students throughout the year, the Literacy Committee also spearheaded the dictionary program. This project, started by our club 13 years ago, distributed more than 4,000 dictionaries to fourth grade students in the Salem-Keizer area.

Other highlights showing the club’s leadership in supporting youth included collecting and distributing 309 gifts through our Tree of Joy program, supporting the Interact Club at both North and South High School and sending three young people to the district RYLA camp experience.

Leading the way on the international front, the club sponsored one out-bound student to Germany, Alyssa Pinter, as part of the international youth exchange and hosted one in-bound student from Taiwan named Yi Wen Yeh who we fondly called Wen Wen. Honored with a World Community Service Award, the club also supported projects in Guatemala, such as a water project, hospital and wheel chair repair, and in the Ukraine another water project. The club also hosted a Group Friendship Exchange from the Rotary Club of Simferopol, Ukraine for a week. Moreover, in financial support of international projects, members of Salem Rotary again surpassed the RI standard of $100 per members by donating $23,550 to the Paul Harris Foundation. This included 15 Paul Harris Fellow or Multiple Paul Harris Fellow awards and 8 new Sustaining Paul Harris Fellows.

Lastly, Rotary International awarded Salem Rotary “Best Club in District” award for membership development and retention. Every member of Salem Rotary can be proud of the difference we made in our community and our world.

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2007-2008, Tim Nissen

2007
Theme: Rotary Shares

The Rotary International Theme for 2007-2008 put forth by RI President Wilf Wilkinson was “Rotary Shares.” The Rotary Club of Salem took this theme to heart and its inverse, “Share Rotary.”

The Club put a major emphasis on membership growth, through the recruitment of new members and the retention of existing members. We inducted over thirty new members from diverse occupational backgrounds, and experienced solid growth for the year. The Club made good progress in its goals of recruiting younger members and a balance between men and women. Board Member, Geoff James, and Committee Chair, Linda Wooters, provided excellent leadership in this area.

Along with membership retention and growth, the Club put a special emphasis on International Projects. A group traveled to Simferopol on a friendship exchange, and this led to our helping with a water project at a special needs school there. President Elect Ron Kelemen traveled with the District 5100 team to Indonesia and this led to our helping with two water projects there. Board Member, David Deckelmann, and Committee Chair, Conrad Stieber, provided excellent leadership in this area, and the work of President Elect, Ron Kelemen, was invaluable.
Our Good Works projects included a yurt for the OSU/Marion County Extension Outdoor Education Facility, a playground surface for the new Family Building Blocks facility in West Salem, and an emergency travel fund at the Mid Valley Women’s Crisis Center. We raised the money for these projects with our Raffle and Presidents Ball. Board Member Teresa Lulay, Committee Chairs, John McCulley, Charles Price, Michele Gray, Suzi Bicknell, and Roger Kirschner led the way with these projects.

As a large club, communications and club operations are an important component of our success. Rick Gaupo took over our Rotogram Newsletter and made it better than ever with greatly improved graphics and detailed coverage of club events. Board member Vin Searles oversaw Bell Ringers, Greeters, Publicity, Cashiers, Roster publication, Invocations and Music. Our club is proud of our tradition of opening every meeting with a song and an inclusive prayer.

This was a good year for Club Fellowship. We devoted several regular meetings to fellowship activities, which were very well received. A portion of the Club took a back road tour to Crater Lake Lodge and back. The Fellowship Committee under the leadership of Renee Campbell was greatly involved in the success of the President’s Ball. Board Member Patricia Callihan-Bowman oversaw Fellowship as well as high functioning committees including Firesides, President’s Orientation, Featured Rotarians, and Rotary Minutes.

Elephant Ears sold well this year. This tradition provides good fellowship as well as funds for some of the Club’s projects, including literacy committee activities. Our area golf tournament supports literacy projects as well. The Literacy Committee, chaired by Eric Kittelson, continues to win awards for a wide variety of projects. Board member, John Shirley oversees this area of Club service.
Once again, the Club pursued Community Service projects with its longstanding Rotary Food drive, Salvation Army bell ringing, our Christmastime Tree of Joy project and quarterly Blood Drives co-sponsored with First Presbyterian Church. Board member, Andrew Anderson supervised these committees, all of which performed at a high level.

Under International Service, the club also organized its support of the Rotary International Foundation. The goal for the club was $100 per member or $19,000. The club did more than its share at $25,000 and Salem Rotarian, Mike Carrick, matched the rest of the club for a total of over $50,000, best in the district, by far. Jim Booth and Dawn Bostwick lead our RI Foundation efforts.

Rotary Club of Salem has consistently supported youth programs. Board Member Greg Millard supervised Youth Exchange and Interact. We enjoyed our inbound student, Marcello Ventura from Brazil. Our outbound student, Julia Prow, had a marvelous experience in Argentina. Interact clubs continued to perform well at both North and South Salem High Schools, where Amy LeFore, Mike Ferris, and Collette Rennie advised them.

The Rotary Club of Salem succeeds, in part, because we have high expectations of our members and a long tradition of putting “Service Above Self.” Club leadership consisted of President, Tim Nissen; President Elect, Ron Kelemen; Secretary, Ron Rubel; Past President, Lois Mulrooney; and Treasurer, Chuck Swank, as well as the nine Board members and Bulletin Editor mentioned in this summary. With over forty-five committees, it is beyond the scope of this history to mention everyone, but they all did their part to demonstrate that “Rotary Shares.”

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2008-2009, Ron Kelemen

2008
Theme: Make Dreams Real

We started our Rotary year in May with a Board planning retreat where we set big goals, reorganized along the Four Avenues of Service, revised our bylaws and constitution, and got ready for a big year. President Ron Kelemen challenged us to make our future greater than our past. We adopted the tagline: “Rotary Club of Salem—a club that gets things done. Good programs, good fellowship, good works.” We more than lived up to that slogan, as we had a lot of fun along the way. These are but a few of the things we accomplished:

We started our rear at 192 members, and ended with 204. To help members in financial stress with their dues, we created the Rotarian Angel Fund from anonymous donations. We added younger people and increased our diversity. At the same time, we started the Salem Area Rotaract Club for young adults between ages 18-30. We made a big effort to get every member participating on at least two committees.

RI’s theme for the year was “Make Dreams Real,” and we did. We set a goal of $25,000 to the RI Foundation, and exceeded it, giving us one of the highest contributions in the District. We also met our $7,500 Polio Plus pledge. With $10,000 and nearly a 4:1 match, we completed our water projects in Indonesia and Simferopol, Ukraine, providing clean water to thousands of children. We also completed in an egg farm in Guatemala, and helped ship thousands of textbooks to Uganda. The International Service Committee greatly expanded its membership and collaborated with other clubs on six projects in Indonesia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Tanzania.

We hosted Sophie Schneider from Austria and sponsored Colleen Harrihill to Argentina. Tragedy struck in January when several exchange students were gunned down outside a nightclub in Portland, killing two. We closed ranks and did what we could to support all of the exchange students, their host families, and friends. We strengthened our Student of the Month program, adding a month to honor vocational students. We co-sponsored the Job Interview Fair for Youth (JIFFY), put an emphasis on the Four-Way Test with wallet cards presented to each of our guest speakers, and a christened a new banner.

The Good Works Committee got to work early in the year and selected Helping Hands Resources as our community project. Our $40,000 was used to help them get matching grants to build a new building. We raised money for this and our international projects through the sale of raffle tickets and a silent auction. In addition, we raised $84,853 in cash and 82,765 pounds of food for our annual food drive. We rolled up our sleeves to work on the Turtle Ridge Wildlife Center and to sell elephant ears at the Salem Art Festival.

Under the fine leadership of Past President Lois Mulrooney, we hosted the District 5100 conference. As the platinum sponsor and the contributor of so many volunteers, we showed the other Rotarians in the District that indeed, we are a club that can get things done.

Three words characterize the feel of the year: communications, fun, and accomplishment. Almost everyone stayed “in the loop” electronically through weekly emails from President Ron, the Rotogram, and our website. We had two road rallies, a concert at the Zena Winery, four fellowship meetings, and we started the tradition of an annual meeting in December. Above all, we made the meetings a fun and inspiring weekly refuge from the economic turmoil in the world. May our future be greater than our past!

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2009-2010, Marybeth Beall

2009
Theme: The Future of Rotary is in Your Hands

The 90th anniversary of the founding of our Club was celebrated at club meetings throughout the year with historical vignettes, birthday cakes and memories shared by past Presidents.

The Rotary International theme “The Future of Rotary Is in Your Hands” was truly put in the hands of our members through the Avenue of Club Service when two email surveys of club members were conducted regarding all aspects of Club operations, especially fundraising. The Board of Directors then set its goals to align with the feedback received from Club members. As a result, the future of the Club and two major changes occurred.

First, a pledge system for contributions to Club Good Works projects was implemented. Secondly, instead of The President’s Ball, a very successful and less formal Community Good Works Celebration was held raising $40,000. Leading these efforts were Board Fundraising Chair Ken Van Osdol and Renee Campbell, Chair of the Good Works Celebration Committee.

The Good Works Committee selected infrastructure improvements for the HOME and HOST facilities, two very worthy programs serving homeless and runaway youth in our community, as our major service project for the year. Additionally, youth from these programs spoke at Club meetings on several occasions and Club members cooked and served three dinners at each facility.

Youth Service efforts continued to expand as we sponsored two exchange students this year, inbound students Andre Spiller from Switzerland and Farid Andres Mendoza from Ecuador and outbound students Corey Kenoyer to Taiwan and Alex Decker to Ecuador.

Additionally, under the Short Term Student Exchange Program led by Lavinia Goto, we sponsored Lindsey Kelly to go to Turkey in July 2009. The summer of 2010 we have Claudia McCammond and Greg Lee going to Japan and Ashleigh Davis going to Germany.

World and Community Service, under John Shirley’s leadership, received two matching grants from Rotary International allowing the Club to sponsor a water well project in Indonesia and to donate 20 computers to a school in Simferopol, Ukraine.

Club Rotarians, friends and family participated in over 13 Community Service projects including the Rotary Workplace Food Drive that raised $80,000 in cash and over 80,000 pounds of food for Marion-Polk Food Share. Six Vocational Service after-hours work site tours and a number of fellowship events were held including new monthly “Dining Groups” and an annual Fall Foliage car tour led by Tom McGirr. The Club achieved its goal of donating $25,000 to the Rotary International Foundation and continued to add numerous Paul Harris Fellows. Despite difficult economic times and many members being transferred due to job changes, membership held steady at close to 200.

The most significant endeavor of the year for our Club was a commitment by the Board to grow our Salem Rotary Foundation so that, in future years, charitable giving proceeds from the Foundation would provide the majority of funding for our annual major Good Works Project. A task force comprised of Foundation and Club Board members was appointed for the purpose of developing a plan to grow the Foundation to the approximately $1 million dollar level needed to do so.

Thanks to Drew Toney, a better than an ever biweekly electronic Rotogram continued to be the main communication tool for the Club. A transition from Clubrunner to a new District electronic database communications system led by Club secretary Ron Rubel promised to be a worthwhile challenge for enhancing club communications.

As another Rotary year closed we continued to earn our tagline: “The Rotary Club of Salem, a Club that gets things done. Good programs, good fellowship and good works.” President Marybeth Beall summed this up best in the four “P’s” that make our Club great: the people; our programs; our projects, and the prestige we have earned as a result.

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2010-2011, Dawn Bostwick

2010
Theme: Building Communities, Bridging Continents

The theme for our Rotary Year 2010-2011 was Bridging Continents and Building Communities. What a true statement of what Rotary stands for.
We bridged continents through sponsoring a Group Study Exchange student Brenna Jensen, who went to Bangalore India, with a team led by club member Ron Kelemen. We continued on with our strong Youth Exchange program. We welcomed Kanna Murashige, sponsored by the Rotary Club of Sapporo West, District 2510. She was a delightful exchange student. She loved dance and excelled in her studies at South Salem High School. Our outbound and STEP programs flourished as well.

We worked hard on strengthening the club’s foundation so that the earnings from the permanent fund can be used to do our Good Works in our community in the future. We held our first Foundation fundraiser with a dinner in honor of the late Marv Abeene and raised $2,000 for the Foundation. It is our goal to have an annual Foundation fundraiser each year. We were blessed with an anonymous donation of $50,000 to our Foundation this year. We gave a number of small grants during the year to very worthy non-profit organizations.

Our goal of $25,000 to The Rotary Foundation was almost met, with good participation once again by those in our club that support The Rotary Foundation.

We built strong bonds by having more presence in the area on community service projects. We assisted senior citizens with their yard work in the fall and the spring, and got involved in several other cleanup projects. We are working on having a more pronounced presence in Salem as a club that is available to help when help is needed.

Our membership remained very stable, and we focused on mentoring our new members to better settle them into our club. We continued with our fun Fellowship events through Firesides, road tours, and dinner groups.

We formed an Interact Club at South Salem High School, and are working on forming one at North Salem High School. We had wonderful Students of the Month throughout the year, and enjoyed hearing of their goals for their futures.

We had another successful Rotary Food Drive, Tree of Joy project, Salvation Army Bell ringing, Elephant Ears Booth receipts and continued to examine the best way to raise funds for our major projects. We also had another year of great programs!

We chose Willamette Academy as our major project to help purchase computers and other technological equipment. Willamette Academy is a special program to assist those under-represented students advance to a higher education and realize their dreams.

As always, our World Community Service Committee committed themselves to spending our club’s funds on very worthy projects internationally, including assistance to the disaster that struck Japan on March 11, 2011.

We had another year of a Club That Gets Things Done. We are a club with purpose and passion and a club that makes a difference in the world.

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