Stories

Greater Mankato Rotary is providing volunteers for the Bend of the River Festival (https://bendoftheriverfestival.com/) on Saturday, September 16, 2023. The Bend of the River Festival features music from 38 Special, Elle King, and Tim Montana. General Admissions tickets are normally $48, but all volunteers will get 1 free ticket for the concert. The club will get a donation based on the number of volunteer hours provided (about $2,000) plus the opportunity to raise tips and donations for the Grater Mankato Rotary Foundation to be used to support our mission of serving youth and community for a better world.

Dateline: [Mankato, MN, May 17, 2023] — The Greater Mankato Rotary Club held their annual speech and debate lunch at the Courtyard by Marriott in Mankato. Seniors from all three local high schools who participated in speech and debate this season were awarded a $300 scholarship and given a chance to share their craft with the lunch attendees.

The Greater Mankato Rotary Club honored three recipients of the Service Above Self event at the annual event on March 1 - one week later than anticipated due to inclement weather in later February. Individual recipients were Laura Doyen and Susu Sadaka and the group recipient was South Central Minnesota Food Recovery, accepted by founder Natasha Frost.

Greater Mankato Rotary will hold a Pass the Gavel event on Tuesday, June 21 beginning at 5:00 p.m. in Country Club Estates Park, Mankato. Club members and their families are welcome to attend. Food and drink will be available as we officially welcome new President Pam DeMarce and say farewell to past President Steve Jameson. Please contact a club member if you would like to attend so that we have the right amount of food. There will be no meeting at noon on Wednesday, June 22.

Members and friends of the Greater Mankato Rotary Club mark your calendars for Saturday, September 17, 2022! The Greater Mankato Rotary club has committed to providing volunteers for the Bend of the River Concert, which will benefit area youth. The club will need about 60 volunteers doing everything from set up or ticket scanning to cleaning up or manning the booth. Concert organizers will pay our club a sum in proportion to the number of volunteer hours we are able to provide. In addition, the board is exploring opportunities to have a presence at the event with a fundraising activity such as a raffle or a drawing. Funds collected will go into our Foundation coffers to directly support students, and provide opportunities such as the Speech & Debate scholarships. Funds earned from volunteer hours will go into the club’s budget to support our mission of “uniting to serve youth and the community for a better world.” A small committee to coordinate these efforts is being formed. If you are interested in serving on this committee, contact Jo Guck Bailey or Pam DeMarce. If you are interested in volunteering for all or part of the event, contact Susan Jameson or sign up online at https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0E4BACA82DA4F4CF8-fall Volunteers in all areas are needed. 

The Greater Mankato Rotary Club - Eco club recently received a boost as it begins an ambitious project in Rotary Park (Augusta and St. Andrews in Mankato). The group, which is a focused subgroup of the Greater Mankato Rotary Club is undertaking a pollinator project set to beautify the park while adding native plants that are friendly to bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. They received a Rotary Shark Tank grant for phases beginning July 1. In the meantime, work has begun around the entrance sign to the park. Additional phases will include more native plant areas, signage to learn more about the plants, and sculptures, including one that spreads the word about the great works of Rotary. 

Come support the Greater Mankato Rotary team as they compete in the YWCA Mankato Youth Programming Bowl-A-Thon on Saturday, February 5 at the Wow! Zone in Mankato. The fun begins at 10:00 a.m. Prizes will be given out for the Most Spirited Team and Best Dressed. Even if you are not a bowler, you can come out and buy a decorated bowling pin for $25 to support YWCA Youth programs. Support of this program fits with the Greater Mankato club's mission to "unite to serve youth and community for a better world." See you there!

The Greater Mankato Rotary will host the 16th annual Service Above Self luncheon on Wednesday, February 23, 2022 beginning at 11:30 a.m. at the Country Inn and Suites in Mankato. This year's recipients include Lori Benike, Dr. Katie Smentek, and the Betsy-Tacy Society. The event recognizes individual and group contributions to the Greater Mankato area. Award recipients are non-Rotary members who give back to the community and exemplify the Service Above Self tenant of Rotary. Sponsorships and tickets to the event are available and the event is open to all. So far our club has exceeded our goal and raised more than $8,000. For more information, please contact Rotarian Pam DeMarce. 

The Greater Mankato Rotary Club will hold its wild card meeting this month at noon on Wednesday, September 22 at Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato. An optional brief tour of the campus will follow the meeting. If you are not a member and would like to attend, please contact Steven Jameson at sjameson@mankatofreepress.com. 

The club's first Wild Card meeting will take place on Wednesday, August 25 at noon. We will have boxed lunch catered into the conference room and get a tour of the new CliftonLarsonAllen Office in Bridge Plaza. Please RSVP to Steve Jameson (sjameson@mankatofreepress.com) if you would like to attend (so we get an accurate lunch count).

Leif Hagen, immediate past president of the Eagan Rotary Club, a Paul Harris Society member, and a 15-year Rotarian of District 5950, announced a new LGBTQ+ Rotary club. This “Minnesota Pride Rotary Club” will be the 1st of its kind in Minnesota, the 2nd in the USA. This new club is seeking 20 founding members with the goal to charter this fall.

The new club plans to meet weekly on Tuesday evenings in Bloomington at the Hilton Hotel at 3900 American Blvd West at Hwy 494 and France Avenue from 5:30 – 7 pm.  Their first informational meeting will be held on Tuesday, August 24 at the Hilton Hotel from 5:30 – 7:00 pm. For more information and/or to RSVP for the event, please contact Leif Hagen at Leif@AchievementFinancial.com  or work: 651-209-6350.

Members of the Greater Mankato Rotary Club hosted about 40 kids from the My Place program in the Dog Pound at ISG Field for a MoonDogs game on July 13, 2021. In addition to a meal and pop, they also enjoyed the first five innings of an exciting game with the visiting Duluth Huskies. In addition, new club president Steve Jameson started the game with the first pitch. Photos by JO Guck Bailey. 

In an attempt to be more relevant to a changing demographic and increase membership, the Greater Mankato Rotary has decided to try changing the format of meetings. Instead of noon meetings with a guest speaker each week, the club will transition this month to a cycle that includes two traditional meetings, one meeting for committees, and one wild card meeting that may include service to the community, networking opportunities, or a club social. These wild card events will be held on the fourth week of the month but may not be at the traditional day and time of noon Wednesdays. In addition, months with five Wednesdays will host an evening social or happy hour. Social events may include family members so that members can connect more fully and better support each other.

As was presented by long-time member Herb Kroon at the Noon meeting on June 16, the Mankato Rotary has been around in some fashion since 1935 when it was chartered with 15 members. Thirty years earlier Paul Harris founded Rotary International. Judge Milt Mason was one of the first members and remained in the club until the early 1980s. Eventually, the club, like the area, grew and morphed into offshoots. The St. Peter club in 1938, the New Prague club in 1945, Waseca in 1960, and North Mankato in 1969.  At its peak in the late 1990s, the Mankato Rotary Club had more than 100 members, perhaps attributing to the fact that women were allowed to join in 1987 (prior to this the “wives” were in Rotary Auxilliary clubs). JO Guck Bailey and Denise Zernechel, current active club members, were among the first to join. Both would later become presidents, following the lead of the first female president Carol Larson in 1993.

For years, Angalia Bianca had slept in abandoned buildings throughout Chicago. She stole. She did drugs. She spent time in and out of jail for forgery, theft, trespassing, and possession of narcotics. But after she landed in prison for the seventh time, something changed -- Bianca knew she wanted a better life. She just didn’t know how to make it happen.

 

After serving her time, Bianca sought help from a local homeless organization, A Safe Haven, and moved to its shelter in the Rogers Park neighborhood. Bianca followed the program closely -- she attended all the required meetings, passed drug tests, and volunteered at every opportunity.

What is it like taking a large team to Africa?  It has probably been one of the most rewarding experiences in my life. In mid February, I began leading Rotary members from all over the East Coast of the United States through Ghana. I’ve tried to give the team a warm Ghanaian welcome like I’ve received on my earlier trips. A large trip is a real blessing because each person sees Ghana and our work in a different way.

A highlight for the team was greeting the chief of Sagadugu. The team got excited about buying goats and food for children in the villages where I support eight churches. It was good to see the pastors of most of the eight churches, and I had to explain that we were just passing through on our way to Bolgatanga.

Throughout India and around the world, Rotary clubs are celebrating a major milestone: India has gone three years without a new case of polio. The last reported case was a two-year-old girl in West Bengal on 13 January 2011. To mark this historic triumph, Rotary clubs illuminated landmarks and iconic structures throughout the country with four simple but powerful words, "India is polio free."

 

The three-year achievement sets the stage for polio-free certification of the entire Southeast Asia region by the World Health Organization. The Indian government also plans to convene a polio summit in February to commemorate this victory in the global effort to eradicate polio.