Rotary Club Radio Episode 017

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Rotary Minute

For today’s Rotary Club Minute, I want to turn our eyes, ears, and hearts to Rotarians in the country of Japan and their entire population; as well as Shelter Box International, who responded quickly to the awful situation. As I’m sure you’ve heard, an earthquake measuring 8.9 shook the island of Japan on March 11, 2011. This event on its own would have been bad enough, but the earthquake triggered a massive tsunami that devastated the coastal cities.

Reports, videos, and pictures from Japan show cars, boats, and building completely destroyed and carried away with waves 10 meters high. To put this into perspective, the earthquake was reportedly 8,000 times stronger than the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand last month.

Shelter Box sent an (SRT) ShelterBox Response Team of three members to deliver the emergency disaster relief boxes to the people of Japan. Currently, tens of thousands remain missing and feared dead, and nearing a 1/2 million are left homeless, either because of the earthquake, tsunami, or evacuations resulting from the nuclear power plants damaged in the quake’s aftermath.

On March 15th, the first shipments of ShelterBoxes have finally arrived. With emergency shelters completely overrun by the displaced, the SRT team will face the challenges of distributing the supplies in frigid temperatures, regular snowfall, a lack of food and water, and hundreds of thousands of desperate people seeking your help.

For today’s Rotary Club Minute, I want to ask you to take a moment to open up your wallets and give a donation to support the efforts of Shelter Box in Japan. I’ve asked my local Rotary Club, the St. Croix Falls Rotary Club, to accept the donations via their secured link. Once we get enough donations for a box, we will send the donations to Shelter Box from the listeners of Rotary Club Radio. Click the image below to donate now.

Featured Segment

017 Rotary Club Radio – Gerry Wersal – District 5960 DGS Chair

Gerry Wersal has been a Rotarian for 11 years and is a member of the Prior Lake Rotary Club. He has been a leader in his local club as well as in the District. He is currently serving as the Chair of the District Grants Subcommittee. His job, as he explains in this episode, is to review and approved projects applying for Grant money through the district.

Visit the District Grants Subcommittee web page. There you will find downloads for: