"The Little Club That Roars"

While working in Nicaragua, several Metroport members created a business for some of the female villagers who weave baskets from pine straw. We purchase the baskets from the weavers—which provide an income stream for them—and resell the baskets in the US. We use the money from the sale of the baskets to finance additional assistance, educational and medical supplies to the village. Members of Metroport Rotary travel to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico annually to paint schools. We are financially sponsoring a Tanzanian student to attend the Kibaoni secondary school in Tanzania. We have a team from our club trained by Family Pathfinders of Tarrant County and working with a family who are trying to become financially independent. We are sponsoring an outbound Youth Exchange Student from Trophy Club to Chile this fall, and are a host club for Group Study Exchange team from French Polynesia and New Zealand for five days in April and May, 2011. We are also host club for an inbound student from Spain for this school term. We will continue to provide and pack winter emergency meals as well as financial support for Metroport Meals on Wheels, and we volunteer to work at their annual fund raising Golf Tournament event each June. We contribute peanut butter and jelly monthly to the Roanoke Food Pantry, and financially support to Grapevine Relief and Community Exchange ('GRACE'). We purchased (and assembled!) 31 Big Wheels for Christmas gifts for families served by Roanoke Food Pantry. We have a group attending the Texas Rangers/Angels baseball game on End Polio Now Night, and we met our annual goals for EREY. Twenty percent of our members attended the District Assembly and 25% attended the District Conference. We sent our President-Elect to the Leadership Training Conference, and will continue to do so. We tried something new this year and had a 'Bring a Guest' meeting during one of our regular meeting days. Several members presented a Power Point program about Rotary International and about our club in particular, hitting on the avenues of service and how our club participates. It was a huge success, and we gained two new members that day. We plan to repeat that event twice a year. We annually send at least two students to RYLA, and several of our members are actively involved in the RYLA program. Our club sponsors the annual 'Burger Burn' for the RYLA kids every year on Saturday night—and they are like a swarm of locusts! Our two students returned from RYLA very high on Rotary and eager to start an Interact Club in Northwest High School in Justin. Our club has agreed to sponsor their efforts. We formed an Interact Club at the new Byron Nelson High School in Trophy Club last school year, and hope to have it chartered this year. We also sponsor an Interact Club at Westlake Academy. We had 14 students from Carroll ISD, Northwest ISD, and Westlake Academy participating in the 'Four-Way Test' speech contest. Metroport has one big fund raising event each spring called Wine Discovery, which is an elegant evening of fine wines and food samples from local restaurants, live and silent auctions, and jazz. The profits from this event enable Metroport to award at least $15,000 in educational scholarships to graduating high school seniors each year at Carroll and Northwest High Schools and this year we added Westlake Academy, as well as financing our other charitable efforts. We also participate in a semi-annual garage sale to make extra monies for our International efforts. We converted to the ClubRunner software program in 2009, and have found it to be an excellent tool for our Club. Part of our Club Assemblies includes ClubRunner training to the members so that everyone can utilize its features. We have a beautiful weekly newsletter which we distribute at the meetings, and email to anyone who is absent. Our goals for 2010-11 are to continue what we are doing, and possibly add another International project. Adding new members is always a goal. Check us out on Facebook— we plan to actively market Metroport Rotary's activities and Wine Discovery through Facebook and Twitter. My personal goal is that we hit all the marks expected of us by RI and the District. I am enormously proud to be a member of and President of Metroport Rotary—we may be small in number, but not in heart and deeds. We like to think of ourselves as 'The little club that ROARS.' By Karen Hewitt as presented in the District 5790 August Newsletter