Welcome our Guest Hallie Flower from New England Youth Theatre
The typical stuff “This day in History” and “Rotary Minute”
Rotary Anniversary: Josh Goldberg – 3 years and Michelle Pong – 10 years!
Announcements:
Cindy Delgatto:
- October 1st at Saxton’s Distillery to present our latest Paul Harris Fellowship.
- September 10 (tomorrow) is a Board (bored?) Meeting
Josh Traeger:
- Rotary Riders bike team: Josh found a very generous sponsor who is donating Rotary themed masks. Anyone who does an hour of volunteering will receive a mask.
Brags:
- Cindy: daughter Danielle is 30 years old today! Born on 9/9/90 (and her brother teases her she is demon spawn)
- Ali: Making it a point to be at Saxton’s Distillery on Thursday evenings. It is a super fun time and socially distant
- Josh T: had some trivia at the Saxton’s Distillery thanks to Josh G. There’s a discussion about doing trivia at the Distillery
- Nick: Brag for kids, first day back at school. Neither of them had tears! Unique situation (due to Covid) with the “inquisition” of the kids and sanitation everywhere. Came home and were happy to have been at school.
Guest Speaker Intro:
Hallie Flower of New England Youth Theatre.
Hallie is the Executive Director and on the core faculty of New England Youth Theatre. In a normal year NEYT offers over 35 programs for over 500 families! Very busy organization which is usually dark two weeks a year (not contiguous two weeks).
Suddenly the doors were closed, sponsors and funding dried up. It caused the question “Who are we?”, “How do we be here for the kids now?”, “how do we be here at the end of this?”
Bringing kids together for the social and emotional piece is what NEYT is all about, learning how to do that via remote has been tough, but has been good learning.
All these questions have brought NEYT back to their core mission of building connection for the kids.
Had some onsite distanced classes. Watching the kids meet in person and seeing the energy and happiness was very fulfilling.
Kids and families are hungry to be together! NEYT will be having programs this fall to keep the connection but is hard due to needing to keep safe. Programs will be onsite, remote and hybrid.
NEYT had to pivot their grant process to emergency grant funding, which cut their time to apply for standard grants which carry NEYT through the year. Now is their time to try to catch up on those grants.