Our Club Year End Report from President Ron Hammel

First of all I want to tell you the Rotary Club of Cheyenne is alive and well.  let me take a minute to touch on a few of our accomplishments over the past 6 months. 

Membership; we have welcomed 11 new members to the club since July 1 which has just kept us on an even keel as these new members off set the loss of members over the same time period.  We started the Rotary year with 215 members and now have 216 members.  What I am excited about is the number of new young members we have welcomed.  Our club cannot continue without an infusion of these younger members.    I am pleased that the Rotary Club of Cheyenne has welcomed this new cadre of youth and they will be the core strength that will carry our club into the future.

We recently surveyed our club membership asking members to comment on their experience as a member of our club.  48 members responded to the survey.  I am happy to report that the general response was good.  All respondents feel welcome in our club.  Most members feel we do an excellent job in the areas of service in our club, but it is obvious that we need to be better communicators on what we are doing in the community and international service Projects area.  There was an almost unanimous response that we were reasonable in our expectations of time and cost for Rotary Dues and Foundation donations.  Most respondents felt our weekly meetings were either Excellent or Adequate.  I am trying my best to manage the meetings so that they are done by 1 to allow people time to get back to their work in a timely manner.  We continue to seek out interesting speakers for our programs.  We are in the middle of a new contract negotiation with the Holiday Inn for a 75 cent increase in our meal cost; in return we will be asking for a little more variety on our meal selections for the upcoming year.  We are also working diligently with the staff of the HI to make sure our AV works each and every meeting.  Our invocation has changed to an Inspirational message  to insure we are fair to all concerned.  Most respondents felt we have the correct number of fellowship activities but more would be welcomed.  And finally our communications seem to be adequate for all members.

The Boys and Girls club play ground was finished on Oct. 18 when a group of 12 Rotarians and non-Rotarians laid the padding under the playground equipment.    We installed a series of 3 bronze plaques in the concrete leading to the playground with the Rotary Wheel, the 4-way test and "Cheyenne Rotary Club - Investing in Cheyenne's future".   Our club, with matching grants from the Rotary District, provided $36,000 towards completion of the playground.  As a Cheyenne Rotarian am PROUD of what our club did to enhance the new B & G club facility.

Our fundraisers have been successful so far this year, the sales of peaches netted $5,000 for the club.  It appears that our Raffle to raise money for the WCS committee for their international humanitarian projects was also very successful,  all 400 tickets were sold.  This will provide $15,000 to the WCS committee and $5,000 to the Cheyenne Rotary Foundation - Great Job!

 Rotary continues to fight polio with only 3 countries remaining Polio endemic, Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.  Our Polio Plus committee with the second annual "Casual for a Cause" campaign raised $4,000 for Polio eradication from 25 businesses in Cheyenne.  In addition, the Community Rotaract Club raised over $1,700 with their "Pan Handling for Polio" campaign.  We also collected several crutches and walkers which will be shipped to Africa to help polio survivors.

Several Rotarians collected over 1000 pieces of cleaning and personal items weighing over 250# and shipped them to a Rotary Club in Pennsylvania where they were distributed to needy Hurricane Sandy Survivors.

We continue to support our youth in the Cheyenne Community, we sent 8 students to  Rotary Leadership camps known as RYLA.  Those students all report back to us that these camps have changed their lives.  We selected 4 high school students from Cheyenne to participate in the year long Rotary Youth Exchange program.  We enjoy Julia from Germany as our current visiting exchange student and lament the departure of Rodrigo back home because of his leg injury.  The Central High Interact club picked up the I-80 stretch between College and Central and we gave the club $200 towards their project.

None of these things would have happened without the dedication and commitment of the Board, Committee Chairs and all the involved Rotarians in our club.

I am Proud to be a member of the Rotary Club of Cheyenne.