Naples Gulf Shore Sunset Rotary Club

Naples Gulf Shore Sunset Rotary Club

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Message from President Elect Carl Thome


The 2010-2011 PETS Seminar in Orlando is now history. We had 450 President Elects from Florida and the Grand Bahamas attending. There was a major emphasis on TRF, Members Retention and Polio Plus. Speaking of Polio Plus, as most of you know, Rotary received a 355 million dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Rotary in return needed to raise 200 million dollars by June of 2012. Rotary is already at the 138 million dollar mark and we are well ahead of schedule. Last week alone over 70 million children in Africa were given the vaccine ..... quite an undertaking! A website of interest is http://www.blogger.com/www.polioeradication.org. This website updates on a weekly basis the cases of polio reported by country. Polio can only be considered eradicated if no cases have been reported 3 years from the very last reported case.

John Smarge of the Rotary Club of Naples was a keynote speaker at Florida Rotary PETS 2010 and discussed his favorite topic .... Membership and Retention. John is also Rotary International Director Elect. He is the first from our District 6960 and we are all quite proud of him. I have had the privilege of knowing John when first he arrived in Naples and have all the confidence that he will represent our District 6960 well. Speaking of District 6960 our current President will be Assistant Governor TRF Area 2 for the 2010-2011 year and we congratulate Marcus on his past two years as President of Naples Sunset Rotary and is continued involvement in Rotary district administration.

Naples Sunset Rotary Club will be facing some new challenges this upcoming new Rotary Year but I feel that we, as a club working together, will face these issues well and will become a stronger club for it.