Guests
A. Deb introduces -Aaron Smith- Prospective Member- Burton Car Wash
a. 2nd time he has visited and Membership Committee is in talks with him about interest
B. Diane - Introduces the one and only, fantastic person all around - Kate "Dance Fever" Traeger
C. Josh T. Introduces the one and only, up and coming Rotarian to be Ayla "loves our buffet and kindness" Traeger
1. Ed Dews - 18 Years a Rotarian brought in from Damon
2. Announcements
A. Board meeting tomorrow 7:15am
B. Tristam- Nutrition Project
a. Moore Court - No one could serve due to sickness until Friday
1. Maybe next time Rotary can step in to help with Emergency issues
b. What we are doing is offering breakfast and lunch during a time that they don't have any meals coming in
c. Episode 25 - Rotary Cares - all about nutrition project - check it out
C. 3 on 3 Basketball- 2.5 weeks away
a. Need more volunteers for
1. Need more Concessions food sign ups
2. Court Monitors
3. Clean up
4. Registration
5. 3 point throw contest volunteer - Debra
A. Need a couple volunteers for this time to clean up balls - 11:30am
6. Cash Prize for winners
7. 0 teams
8. Justin FB Event Coordinator
A. Share FB event – Here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/events/206277800751779/
B. He has done a great job promoting the event but needs all of our help to push it further on FB
C. Invite friends
D. Put link for into minutes FB
E. Reformer ads
F. Radio ads
b. Set up is 4:30 on Friday
c. Concessions we need more food
D. Basement
a. Need to organize - maybe 1 hour of work
3. Student Rotarians - Hazel and Alena
A. Brattleboro Boys Nordic Team won state championship - last time was in 1970s
a. Fire Truck ride to celebrate win
b. Girls team got 5th in the state
B. Student Election
a. New President Elected - Sara Butterfield a Student Rotarian!!!
C. Hockey Teams did well in playoffs
a. Boys continueing on
b. Girls played well but will not be moving on
D. Art and Writing Contest
a. Hazel - won art piece of it
4. Rotary International
A. COVID-19 Virus and common Flu precautions
a. Try to find new ways to say hello - less shaking hands and hugging
b. Suggestions from Scribe
1. Wash hands before meeting and after meeting
2. If your sick with a cold or flu- rest at home and do not come to meeting-
5. Cards - YOU LOSE LOSERS
6. Brags
A. Erin
a. - go check out the art museum - great exhibits
b. Brag for Justin for an incredible 80's party
1. 260 people - great job Justin
2. Such fun dancing
3. Mona, Kate, Erin, KJ, Diane, got there groove on
c. Received Waterways Grant
1. Indigenous knowledge
2. Community art making
3. River studies
4. Land use and ecology
B. Justin
a. 80's Dance was amazing
1. Huge fundraising- $1,800 raised
C. Jen
a. Bragged for her son's leap year birthday he turned 3 or 12 depending on how you look at it.
b. He is an awesome young man
D. Marcy
a. Rowan is swimming in swim-athon
b. Democracy - great to see so many people voting
E. Tom
a. Elected as a lister
F. Damon
a. Family trip to British Columbia
b. Good to catch up with family
c. Rhode Island Track team
7. Speaker- Tristam Johnson
GUATEMALA PRESENTATION WEDNESDAY MARCH 4TH
I was asked to conduct an interim assessment of the GG with a focus on reducing malnutrition and increasing household income.
Let me first ask what your reaction is to malnutrition
What do you picture
What meals are served
What foods are available
What is an annual diet?
Now let me ask what your reaction is to increasing household income
If the economy is based on the $1US, what might the increase be
How much does the family make now
In terms of the household,
what is that, what does it look like, what do you picture
What services are available
I went to Chiquimula, Guatemala a 5.5 hour drive from G.City. The highway was 2-lane to 4-lane, slow mountainous terrain, lots of curves, and evidence of mud slides during the rainy season. The region was a sea bed so is made up primarily calcium, a soil that does not support much.
Chiquimula is the capital of the state by the same name and fairly large. I did not see evidence of colonial periods other than the architecture and grandeur of the Catholic churches. This is a Mayan region, lots of indigenous who spoke chorti'. The women in Oquen are Mayan but their dress is less obvious, while the women of Tunuco Abajo are 100% Mayan and their dress beautiful, colorful, traditional.
I visited Oquen and Tunuco Abajo where this project was being implemented for a second time, building on the success of the first project and using veterans of the first to help instruct those getting involved in the second. This is one of the poorest regions of the country where families strive to survive on what little they can grow and what little income the men can earn. The men depend on the seasonal harvests of coffee and sugar cane, generally November thru April, from which they may earn about the equivalent of $900, their annual income.
The area is dry suffering from multiple years of extended drought. Surface streams offer barely a trickle, water is scarce.
The people have depended on corn and beans for generations and often plant in the most precarious erosion prone hillsides. During heavy rainstorms they can lose up to 80% of their crop, leaving barely enough for one meal a day for the family. Families on average include 6 to 7 people, though the trend now is to smaller families.
This project depends on Project Harvest, a 12-year old Canadian not-for-profit that has experience in numerous countries. Simply, they teach how to plant care for and harvest vegetables, food stuffs not at all a part of the annual diet. The first and second project each focused on providing services and assistance to 66 familes. By the end of the 2nd project, 132 families will have benefited, about 860 people.
Soils are poor so the project teaches the techniques of composting, but leaf litter and other organic matter is scarce in Oquen so creating compost is more time consuming. Tunuco Abajo has not been so severely deforested so leaf litter is more plentiful and composting more immediately successful. However, as those of you who may practice this, a compost needs to be kept moist, water, and this commodity is scarce.
The project requires a garden space of 100m2 per family, and most have this space, but not all. These folks live on steep hillsides so they are taught how to terrace their gardens using rocks to build each level. Soil is moved in to place and compost added when possible.
The project offers vegetable seeds for onions, cilantro, radishes, cucumber, cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, etc. Seed spacing and care is very different than required for corn and beans, so families must be taught this new technique.
The new technique means they must change generations of habits & routines. They must also add new flavors and cooking habits. In the case of this project, the change was less hard to accomplish as the results of a successful garden mean a reliable source of food year-round to compliment corn and beans. The gardens can offer two harvests per year.
I asked about flavors and whether kids and adults liked the new foods. They were emphatically happy. A note here is that men and children contribute to the care of the garden, but the women are primarily in charge.
The project includes the director of the local office of the Secretary for Security of Food & Nutrition. Ablelardo Villafuerte told me he annually collects data on severe cases of malnutrition and has seen the incidence decline.
These communities include pigs, dogs, cats chickens and turkeys, so the gardens are fenced, provided for by the project.
Available water is an issue so this project offers water catchment systems, tanks, fencing, tubing, roofs, and rain gutters, so that during the rainy season families can collect and store enough water to allow them to irrigate their gardens for 9 months, if the families don't begin to use the water for household purposes. Every family will have a tank but they prepare the ground, carry the material to their sites, construct the wire form, shape the black plastic "tank", set the poles for the roof, and install the roof and gutter. Finally, the set the protective fence surrounding the tank.
Improving household income is another component of this project. As the gardens can produce at least 2 harvests per year, the women have a chance to take excess to local markets. I was skeptical about this, wondering if it is one of the poorest regions of the country, how could anyone have the funds to buy anything other than the extreme most essential basics, and how "local" are the local markets. I needed to see the communities.
The local markets serve not only these communities but a large region where there are people with the ability to buy. The journey to the local markets may be as much as a 2-hour walk, but certainly manageable in this context.
Women can sell excess harvests and may earn up to $300, which means that annual household income my reach $1200. The women are taught to save some of their earnings to buy seeds for those vegetables that do not produce their own. This training is essential for sustainability.
All-in-all this is a great project and the work being done by Project Harvest is excellent. One final note is that 5 international development organizations are so impressed with the simplicity and success of these two projects and of Project Harvest that they want to replicate this effort.