Newsletter - Archive  Mar 10, 2010

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Rotary Club Business and Member News

March 10, 2010

Opening:

Pledge     Pres Richard

Prayer      Madiha

Song        Chip

Visiting Rotarians and Guests:

Chris Sterndale     Rotary Club of Portsmouth

Announcements:

Pres. Rich    In celebration of Read Across America, he went to Growing

Places with his dog and read "Lady and the Tramp" to the youngsters.

District Assembly is Saturday, April 10, at the York County

Community College.  Contact Jud if you expect to attend.

District Conference is May 14-16 at the Portsmouth Sheraton.

The Board met Tuesday, March 9, and voted to make the  

      following donations:

      Womenade  -  $ 750.

Bobcat Bolt  -  $ 500.

On-Belay  -  $ 500.

Citizen of the Year nominations should be turned in to Pres

Rich within the next few weeks.

Next year's Board will meet on Tuesday, March 23, at 5 pm at 

Mariner Realty.

Sell your raffle tickets.  Sign up for selling at the Durham 

Marketplace on April 9, 10, 11.

Bill D            Camp Sunshine clean-up will be Tuesday, March 30.

Brian            Please sign up for the Dinghy and prayer.

Happy Bucks:

Pres Rich     Great weekend skiing at the Balsams

Bill D            Good day skiing at Canon

John B          Durham's swans are back

Brian             Dilemma at greeting and money taking (uses KISS principle)

Pete              Birthday

Don              Pleased with school board election results

Chip             Sister and grand-nephew are visiting

Ric               Wife Marci doing well after scary fall and hospital stay

Warren        Just happy

Dick B          Thanks to Brian for stepping in at the money taking table

Henry           Brian is trainable at money-taking and accounting

Program:

Chris Sterndale  -  Director of Cross Roads House in Portsmouth

Chris is a Madbury native, UNH grad and now resides in Durham.  He is also a member of the Rotary Club of Portsmouth.

Cross Roads House is a shelter for the homeless. In NH, homelessness is typically a family and/or mental health issue.  Major causes are cost of housing (rental costs vs income), family problems, mental health problems (maintaining relationships) and substance abuse (typically alcohol and prescription medicine).

Approximately 60% of their residents are single moms with pre-school children.  Another large group of residents are young adults (18-24) who are coming out of the system of foster care and other government programs.

Cross Roads House has a new building which has 88 beds with 70-80 typically occupied.  The average stay is 6 weeks.  Their primary mission is to get the homeless inside and ready to move out on their own.  Last year, approximately 75% of their families moved into some sort of permanent housing.  For young persons, housing is a problem due to the cost factor. There are no longer boarding houses.  The waiting time for public housing is 18-24 months.

Volunteers provide about 60 dinners every night.  Cross Roads House offers shelter, a warm dinner, a mobile health clinic, mental health assistance and AA/NA.

Megabucks:

Pete failed to pull the winning card (no cards available last week)

Frank won the drawing this week but also failed. $55 pot rolls over.

Upcoming Programs:

March 17   George Maglaras, Strafford County Commissioner

March 24   John Pokoski - Early days at IBM

March 31   Doug Bencks, UNH Campus Planner

April  7       Bob Mittelholzer, NH Supreme Court

Your Scribe: John B