“The Friendly Breakfast Club”
Newsletter

Meetings

May is Youth Service Month

Our Rotary Family
BIRTHDAYS

WEDDING ANNIVERSARIES

Rotary Online

https://dunwoodyrotary.org
https://rotary6900.org/
https://rotary.org/

ROTARY CLUB OF
Dunwoody

LEADERSHIP

SPEAKER THIS WEEK: ​Leigh Longino

Leigh Longino is the CEO of Camp Corral. She joined the national nonprofit in 2015 as COO and prior to that served on the Board of Directors. An expert in camp programming and operations, Leigh served in various positions within the YMCA, managing program development, risk management and staff development for 20 years. Leigh puts great effort into confidently leading the organization to advance the mission and create sustainability for the future of the organization and those we serve.

“I have a remarkable job that allows me to interact with military children in settings where they can set aside the pressures, stresses and challenges of their daily lives. Our organization provides free, transformational summer camp experiences to military youth, with a core focus on helping children of wounded, injured, ill or fallen service members. ”Since its founding in 2011, Camp Corral has grown over 750%, now having served more than 20,000 campers across the country. Leigh has focused her efforts in stabilizing and growing the organization to become a national leader in strong partnerships across the camping industry. Camp Corral has benefited from the implementation of corporate, individual and annual fundraising campaigns to continue to advance our mission. Longino believes that “every day there is a child on the waitlist, is a day I’m driven to come to work and do my best. Every military connected child and every family can benefit from the Camp Corral experience.”

Leigh resides in Raleigh, NC with her husband, whom she met at camp, and three young daughters. Together as a family they enjoy traveling, hiking, sailing and preparing for the next adventure.

Year end update...

Looking for items/points that members want included in a standard template to be used each year to update members on the Club. Please think about what items/topics you think should be included and send your list to Rick Otness (rdcpres@gmail.com) by next Friday (05/11/18). We are anticipating that it will take a couple of weeks to pull together whatever information is needed to fill in the template.

We also want to set up information tracking systems to allow that information to be easily gathered during Rick Woods and then Cathie Brumfield's years.

​Update on Community BBQ

Jack Sparks has stepped up to lead the Community BBQ. He is currently assembling his teams. These are the teams for which he is looking for volunteers.

Please reach out to Jack Sparks ( jack.sparks@firstcitizens.com ) if you already know which team you want to be a part of.

RCD international committee

RI has given final approval for our Global Grant for C - arm imaging equipment for Les Cayes Hospital in Haiti. Our contribution of $5000 as international sponsor has grown to over $209,000 thanks to the many rotary clubs,

​Dunwoody Rotary Charitable Fund (DRCF) Revisions

The Incoming Club Treasurer and Trustees of the DRCF have been meeting and reviewing the Declaration of Trust (the underlying document that governs the permissible activities of the Trust). Roughly, every ten years the document is reviewed and modifications suggested to the membership. This will be the third time this has been done. Most of the changes deal with refining descriptions and making the Trust more effective in achieving its goals, while making sure that safeguards are in place to protect the Trust's assets.

During the next 2-3 weeks, they will be publishing the recommended changes, and seeking additional input from interested members. Any changes to the Declaration of Trust must be approved first by the Board , and then by the membership before taking effect.

Stay tuned.

​Dunwoody Arts Festival

We need volunteers for our Rotary Club of Dunwoody booth at the Dunwoody Arts Festival (on Saturday 05/12, and Sunday 05/13). We use the booth to answer questions of the Public about what Rotary does, and to generate interest in becoming a member.

The booth would normally cost an artist/organization ~$7,500. We are given the booth as a thank you gift for our efforts to help artists set up during the early morning hours (4 AM to 8 AM) on Saturday. We have all the volunteers we need for the early setup.

What we need are people that will staff our booth for 2 hour shifts. Here are the volunteers that we have so far.

We like to have at least two people per shift. If you can cover one of the above shifts, please let Rick Otness know by either sending him a text message (at 770-715-9251) or by sending him an email ([otness_r@mindspring.com]otness_r@mindspring.com).

​Rotary Club of Dunwoody’s Very Own Peace Fellow

Did you know that the Rotary Club of Dunwoody has sponsored the first (and only at this point) Peace Fellow in District 6900? Her name is Kate Keator and before becoming a Peace Fellow Kate worked at the Carter Center. Since September of 2017, Kate has been studying about peace and conflict resolution at the University of Bradford in England. She will be visiting the Club on May 18 and will provide a brief update about her year as a Rotary Peace Fellow. Kate recently sent this summary of her experience.

My time of taught courses at University of Bradford is a quickly coming to a close -- I only have four weeks till the end of the semester and four essays to complete! My classes here have been thoroughly enriching, not solely due to the lecturers but also to the wide range of diversity among the students. Many students here have years of experience in the practitioner field (e.g. a UN Peacekeeper from Bangladesh, a Ugandan Member of Parliament who also runs her own female empowerment NGO, a security and arms researcher from an organisation in Columbia that helped shape public policy) and often bring new perspectives and insight to our class discussions. I have really enjoyed taking a step back to explore the big ideas around peace, conflict, and conflict resolution.

Concerning Rotary, it has been amazing. I really love my group of Rotary Fellows -- we are diverse and not afraid to debate each other about issues of the world but can still grab a beer and explore a nearby English village together. Actually, I went to Bogota, Columbia at the beginning of December to attend a peace technology conference called Build UP and stayed with the parents of one of my Rotary Fellows. They showed me around Bogota which was wonderful. Plus the peace technology conference was absolutely amazing -- there are some really amazing ideas being tested out in Colombia. That trip was completely funded through my conference stipend provided by Rotary.

At the beginning of this year, Rotary hosted a trip for us to go to Norway to meet the Uppsala Fellows and visit prominent peace institutions based in Oslo. Here is a blog post I wrote for our RPF (Rotary Peace Fellows) blog about that:http://blogs.brad.ac.uk/rotary-peace-centre/oslo-v.... In February we attended a Rotary Peace Conference in Coventry, UK were a few of us (including myself) ended up leading some discussions about the usefulness of the Rotary Peace Fellowship and how to invest in peace. It was really insightful since it reminded me how few people in Rotary know about the fellowship and the "output" of is unclear to many. I have done quite a few speaking engagements at various Rotary Clubs in the northern UK which has been a great way for me to raise awareness about RPF, talk about peace technology and Syria, and practice my public speaking skills! The Rotary clubs here in the UK are quite different from what I've seen in the US -- small and fairly informal.

This summer I will be conducting my Applied Field Experience with Search for Common Ground in Beirut, working on their Track II Mediation on Syria and helping with their business development projects promoting private-public partnerships for peacebuilding initiatives in Lebanon. I start in the middle of the June and I believe the internship will be about three months. During that time I will also be working on my dissertation... eek! I have chosen a topic but need to start collecting the literature and writing things down. I will be looking at the role that social media played in changing the conflict actors in the Syrian conflict and how conflict analysis has changed due to access to big data, using the Syrian conflict as an example. I am really excited to dive in but it is quite a bit to do.

Also, I forgot to mention that the Rotary Peace Centre - University of Bradford Facebook page has uploaded quite a bit about our travels. Here are a few links to its recent posts that include me:

https://www.facebook.com/UBRotaryPeace/posts/60036... (pictures from our trip to France and Belgium to visit WWI memorials)

https://www.facebook.com/UBRotaryPeace/videos/5999... (video of me and colleague Natalia)

https://www.facebook.com/UBRotaryPeace/posts/59329... (from a crisis simulation we did in the quaint town of Haworth where the Bronte sisters lived)

Finally, I am an "ambassador" for the Institute of Economics and Peace which is a partnership IEP has with Rotary International to educate them more about IEP's quantitative measuring of peace and conflict. I worked with them briefly when I was at The Carter Center and I am so excited to be learning more about how they produce their Global Peace Index and getting a chance to speak on their behalf.