Kevin Reich Installed as President of EH Rotary Club

On June 28 Kevin Reich was installed as President of East Hampton RC by Red McKinney.

 So here is Red installing Kevin as President for 2017-2018. Kevin then gave an excellent speech outlining his plans for the year. He has included a goal of adding more members from Marlborough since we are the Rotary Club of East Hampton and Marlborough.

And the club gave Anne McLaughlin a Paul Harris Fellow award for all the work she has done for the city of East Hampton.

And the club made Sharon Hull the Rotarian of the year. She was Sargent at Arms but did many other things.

And here's Immediate Past President  giving George P his winnings.

A great installation, thanks to all who made it happen.

On June 27 Trish Pearson was installed as Governor at Anthony's  in East Haven.There was quite a crowd and it was a great night.

Here she is about to be installed. She gave a fine speech which thanked all those who have helped and outlined her plans for the year.

Here is outgoing Governor Paul taking care of some of the preliminaries before dinner. The cocktail hour and dinner were outstanding as usual at Anthonys.

As usual at the end was the passing of the Governor's hat. However Trish changed it by passing the hat as a collection for her Governors project in Uganda. The PDGs got into the spirit.
Abe gave a history of the Hat etc and mentioned the trophy which was given to Rotary in UK and Scotland and Ireland. That trophy is still awarded every year. Wouldn't it be great to get a representative of a winner of that trophy to come here to talk about Rotary.

Rotary Youth Exchange Banquet

The Rotary Youth Exchsnge Banquet was held on June 4 at the Graduate Club. The six exchange students each talked about their year. They were wonderful, the growth during this year and their ability to speak in front of a group has been great.

Hamden Rotary club June 6

I visited Hamden Rotary club on June 6 and the recent attendees at RYLA were there. They had seven attendees from two different schools. Rajib one of this years directors attends Hamden HS In this photo in addition to the seven RYLA attendees we have on the left the Hamden Rotary President, Lynn, Dave Ullman and on the other side Paul Bergemann the President Elect.

Every year Hamden has a sports dinner where they invite the high school sports teams in town and give out Rotarian athlete of the year to chosen people on each team. The coaches choose an athlete on their team who meets Rotarian principles. Athletes, coaches and parents all come. Parents pay but the club pays for others. They have done this for 41 years. It's a great event.

The Hamden Interact Club raised $3100 for Freshwater Focus, a multiclub project providing freshwater systems overseas. They had a kickball tournament for several schools and a badminton tournament at Hamden High.

A Visit to Chester Rotary Club

I was at Chester RC on May 31. They are at a new to me restaurant(Pattaconk 1853) in downtown Chester. It's very nice. They discussed their lobsterfest(oldest in our district), the Road Race and the highlight was a discussion of their planned help at their Elementary School. The outgoing and incoming principals were present.  Ron Woodward was given his Paul Harris +4 pin, congratulations Ron. Here's Cheryl Archer, Chester's President giving Ron the pin.

Rotary Youth Leadership Awards(District 7980) May 12-14 at Camp Hazen

Rotary Youth Leadership Awards Is a conference for high school students. Our District holds two RYLAs per year at Camp Hazen. We had 83 students at our RYLA on May 12-14. The conference is student run by student directors and about 20 .trained student facilitators. The goal of the conference is to provide the attendees with leadership skills which will help them in their lives.

At the beginning the students prepare a banner and a cheer which is a way to get them to work together and learn a bit on how to lead in a group of strangers.



Here you can see the student directors at the front of the room teaching the attendees about leadership and what skills are needed to be a good leader.

Many of the activities give the attendees a chance to talk to a large group of other attendees. This gives them a chance to practice public speaking and to also share some of their own thoughts.




At this RYLA an award was given to an Interact club which has been running for 40 years. The
Joseph A Foran High School Interact Club in Milford, CT.

The students work in groups of 6-8 to prepare a proposal for a service project. Each group makes a short presentation and every attendee does a part of the presentation. A group of Rotarian judges then chooses one or more projects for funding. At this RYLA three projects were chosen for funding by four eminent Rotarians.

Committee Chairs and AG Meeting hosted by Governor Trish

On May 20 Governor Elect Trish Pearson had about 20 leaders on Laurel Island to

communicate with each other and share goals and plans. Here is Governor Elect Trish and her dog laying out the plan for the day.

One of the activities was a challenge for all in the room to work together to put together a bunch of pictures into a sequence. The 7980 leaders did pretty well but there was definitely room for improvement.

The highlight was "Speed Dating" where each Committee representative talked to a sequence of AGs about how they could work together. For Youth Services there was great interaction and an understanding of how Youth and AGs could work together. A presentation was made on RYLA by one of our RYLA alumni which was very well received.