President Debra Mars with Beth Humbert of Whole Latte Coffee, a coffee house which employs Adults with Moderate Disabilities.
Rotary District 6650 Leadership Team
District Leadership Wooster Visit
Welcome to District 6650
Are you an established professional who wants to make positive changes in your community and the world? Our club members are dedicated people who share a passion for community service and friendship. Becoming a Rotarian connects you with a diverse group who share your drive to give back.
Change your community with us by volunteering on a local project.
We work with groups and organizations of all sizes to accomplish even more.
1800+
Total Active Members
46
Clubs
$50,000+
Annual District Grants
Stories
On August 3rd, the Struthers Rotary held a tribute picnic for Struthers First Responders at the city's Mauthe Park.
The Rotary also announced the awarding of a Rotary District Grant of $2800 to the city for help with the replacement of the roof of the Rotary Pavilion at the park.
The Club also awarded Catherine Cercone-Miller a second Paul Harris Fellow. Cathy was a member of Struthers first Interact Club some 20 years ago. While participating in the club's first job shadowing, a stop was made at city hall. While there, the Mayor invited her to sit in his chair. She declared, " Someday this will be my chair." Later on, when the Rotary started a Community Corp, she served as President for six years. However, about a year and a half ago, she had to give that up as she became the first woman to be elected as Mayor in a city in Mahoning County. The club wanted to recognize the Mayor for her long history of dedication to the community of Struthers from her high school years to her current position leading our community to improvement and ensuring our sustainability.
Struthers Rotary President Karen Edwards, Foundation Chair Tom Baringer and Struthers Mayor Cathy Cercone-Miller
Outgoing President John Lundin received a clock as a memento of his year as Rotary President from new President Ryan Boyce.
Officers and Board Members 2021-2022
Williams Dawes congratulates Student of the Year, Paige Bailey
Dr. Kelly Darney presents the non-Rotarian Service Above Self Award to
Kevin Clark. Kevin is the advisor for the club’s Rotaract Club at CCCTC. The club is a large and active club that performs a service project monthly.
Come join your fellow Rotarians from District 6650, District 6630 and District 6600 for a night of fellowship on Thursday, July 22, 2021, to watch the Cleveland Indians play the Tampa Bay Rays. The gates will open at 6:00 pm and the first pitch will be at 7:10 pm. This Rotary event includes access to the 4th Floor Terrace Club, dinner and Pepsi products, exclusive raffles and silent auctions.
All tickets include a contribution to The End Polio Campaign.
For more information on this event and to view the registration form, click on this LINK.
Struthers Rotary Club President Karen Edwards was presented a Paul Harris Fellow award at the Sixties Bash held at Struthers Mauthe Park on June 24th. Karen possesses boundless energy and successfully led the club through a very difficult year. While other clubs went dormant during the Covid-19 pandemic, Karen held weekly Zoom meetings and helped keep our spirits alive. The Struthers Rotary Club, under Karen’s leadership, managed to meet its community improvement goals and created partnerships with the city, schools and other Rotary clubs to several projects. Karen exemplifies the Rotary Motto, Service Above Self, and has expended amazing amounts of time and effort toward seeing the Struthers Rotary have a truly successful year. Karen has also agreed to accept an additional term as Struthers Rotary President to continue her efforts to see the club through the pandemic and the following recovery period.More information about the Struthers Rotary Club can be found at https://www.facebook.com/struthers.rotary or by e-mail at struthersrotary@aol.com. Information about the Paul Harris Fellow Award can be found at https://www.rotary.org/en/history-paul-harris-fellow-recognition
Pictured above: Struthers Rotary President Karen Edwards (left) receives the Paul Harris Fellow Award from Rotarian Mary Ann Morell (right) at the Struthers Rotary Club "60s Bash
In spite of COVID-19 and more than a year of virtual meetings, the Rotary Club of Wooster, chartered on January 21, 1921, is in the middle of a year-long gala celebration of its centennial anniversary, which will culminate with a banquet on October 7.
Throughout the year, club members have enjoyed “digging in” to the past with weekly emails compiled by club historian, Ray Leisy, featuring highlights of the club’s activities and memorable programs during its first 100 years.
Monthly feature articles, published in the Wooster Daily Record and curated by Past DG/ Past Club President Phil Mariola, chair of the 100th anniversary committee, have focused on many of the club’s local and international projects - digging latrines in Kenya, and digging holes for the more than 2000 American flags which comprise the Wooster Rotary Parade of flags – to name just a few.
Of course, the celebration also includes several community projects, at least one of which involves- you guessed it – digging into the future.
Members of the anniversary committee thought it would be fitting to plant 100 trees in honor of Wooster Rotary’s 100 years, and contacted the city of Wooster for suggestions about where to plant the trees. The city had another idea: would the club be willing to rescue and transplant some trees that had been overplanted at the Secrest Arboretum on the campus of The Ohio State University’s College of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Science in the aftermath of a 2010 tornado? The arboretum had offered to give the trees to the city, but moving and replanting the trees, many of which were 20 to 30 feet tall, was going to be costly, and not covered by the city’s budget.
Recognizing that many of the trees in question had been planted by Rotarians in collaboration with several other service clubs following the devastating tornado, the club was eager to participate in the rescue effort, and quickly agreed to relocate the trees to the city’s Oak Hill Park, a 100 acre work-in-progress, and home to many species of trees, plants, birds and other wildlife, with a 1.7 mile paved trail for walking, jogging and biking, a giant sledding hill and ample space for cross-country skiing.
The park also includes a large pavilion and a bike repair station, both donated by Wooster Rotary, and now features an impressive “Founder’s Row,” with 24 of the rescued trees lining a portion of the trail, to honor each of the club’s 24 founding members. Signage, which will commemorate the 100th anniversary, and will include the names of the 24 founders, is currently under construction, and will complete Phase I of the Oak Hill Park improvement project.
Phase II of the project is currently under design by a committee of club members led by Past President Ron Holtman. During this phase, the club will develop a “Memorial Grove,” featuring additional trees and plants designed to provide year-round color, benches and signage honoring the 37 club members with 50 or more years of membership, with space to add the names of members who achieve that goal in the future.
We hope you will come visit us in Wooster and spend some time in Oak Hill Park. We think you’ll dig it!
Congratulations to Pete Apicella, Mike Raulin and the District Foundation Committee. Our District had 13.8% growth in Paul Harris Society Members during this year. For this accomplishment we received $1000 to use for our Foundation Activities.
Boardman Rotary hosted our Community Drive-Thru Pancakes and Sausage Event over two weekends in March. We thank our co-chairs Maggie Garland and John Rudolph for their leadership to serve the community.
Rotary Club of Lake Township: Recycling plastic, protecting local landscapes, and providing park benches– all in one program
Remember the popular ad campaign created years ago by America’s Dairy Council, with the catchy phrase “Got Milk?” paired with a photo of a celebrity wearing a milk mustache?
Today one thing we’ve got, no questions asked, is plastic.
The numbers below reveal the impact of plastic bags alone:
- In the US alone, more than 100 billion plastic bags are used each year – that's more than 300 bags per person.
- It's estimated that the US throws out roughly 100 billion plastic bags annually, generating about 3.3 million tons of trash (only about 1 to 2 percent are recycled). (Oct 4, 2014)
- 100,000 marine animals are killed by plastic bags annually.
The Rotary Club of Lake Township feels our club is doing its part to reduce plastic bags and film going into our local environment, laying alongside our roadways, and entering state landfills by participating in a simple plastic recycling program. It’s one that you can easily support as well.
Our Club of Lake Township began participating in the NexTREX Community Recycling program in July of 2019, after learning about it from friends and members of the Port Summit Rotary Club
TREX is a U.S. manufacturer of premium outdoor living products including benches, decking, and railing, and for the past decade has accepted plastic recycled film to create their product line. The company offers recycling challenges to schools and community groups to participate, specifically, to collect 500 pounds of plastic within a six-month period. If we do so, we receive a high performance composite bench, such as the two shown in the photo, made by TREX.
In less than a year, we have earned three beautiful park benches, which we will be donating to community partners in our area. One will soon be placed next to the Love Our Community warehouse in Hartville; the final resting places for the other two are yet to be determined.
It is easy to collect the plastic film needed by TREX because the plastic film is commonly used for food and convenience packaging today. Here is what is accepted:
NOTE: All plastic collected must be clean, dry, and free of food residue.
- plastic film labeled with a #2 or #4 recycling symbol (polyethylene films)
-retail and grocery bags
-bread bags
-bubble wrap, air pillows
-dry cleaning wrap bags
- newspaper sleeves and fresh produce bags
-ice bags
-plastic shipping envelopes
-Ziploc and other reclosable food storage bags
-cereal bags
-case overwrap, i.e., such as used for water bottles and new furniture pieces
- salt bags
- pallet wrap and stretch film
-wood pellet bags
As our members collect plastic, we weigh it and report the weight to one of several Rotary Club members who maintain a plastic collection spreadsheet. We also forward our recycling totals to Stephanie Hicks, Materials Sourcing Manager at TREX, via e-mail. We then drop our plastic off, preferably collected in clear or light colored plastic bags – no black heavy duty garbage bags, please - to our local Hartville Giant Eagle grocery store’s large plastic collection bin, located outside by its main entrance. As our local retailer participating as a collection point for TREX, Giant Eagle moves the plastic collected on its way to a TREX manufacturing facility.
We have encouraged other local community groups to begin their own NexTREX plastic collection during the past year. To date, the Hartville Lions Club, Lake Township FISH Food Pantry, and Northhampton Rotary Club are also now collecting plastic for TREX.
If you are currently donating your plastic bags and film to Giant Eagle in Hartville as a community member, know that you are contributing as well to this great TREX recycling program. Remember another great way you can help the environment is to bring and use your own shopping bags to the store every time you shop.
If your organization wants to accept the plastic film recycling challenge, visit https://recycle.trex.com or call Stephanie Hicks for more information at 540-542-6494, or e-mail her at NexTrex@trex.com.
-Submitted by Karen Koch, President, Rotary Club of Lake Township
Upcoming Events
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ROTARY YOUTH LEADERSHIP AWARDS (RYLA) Conference
The Avalon Inn Resort & SpaFeb 25, 2022 – Feb 27, 2022