Clyde Strickland

“I hope everyone enjoyed our speaker and program at today’s Rotary Meeting.  Thanks particularly to Stas for arranging this great speaker and program.   I was personally inspired by our speaker Clyde L. Strickland.  I came home and looked up the movie he mentioned in his talk “AmericanMadeMovie”.  I have listed the web site below and sincerely hope each of our members takes the time to watch this incredible story.  It is available online for rent or purchase.”
– David Freeman

http://americanmademovie.vhx.tv

Mike Freeman: Shelter Box

Club Meetings, Uncategorized, , , ,

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Gainesville Rotarian Mike Freeman spoke to the Rotary Club of Lawrenceville about Shelter Box. Shelter Box is an organization that creates large boxes containing supplies such as a tent, mosquito nets, and water purification materials. These boxes are deployed to natural disaster zones and distributed to local survivors, enabling them to have basic shelter and survival supplies as they rebuild their lives. Shelter Box was created by a Rotary Club in the UK and is now an international organization with at least one team deployed at all times. It has a small paid staff but is mostly run by volunteers. Mike has been deployed 16 times to disaster zones such as Zambia, Guatemala, Mexico, and New Jersey. Each time he travels with a small team that assesses the needs in the affected area and oversees distribution of the boxes, which can be tailored to contain needs specific to the zone where they will be used. Mike also described his most recent Shelter Box deployment to the Philippines in 2014 after Typhoon Haiyan devastated the area in late 2013. After Mike spoke, the Rotary Club of Lawrenceville donated $1,000 to Shelter Box.

 

Nicole Hendrickson: Gwinnett County Community Outreach

Nicole Hendrickson is the Community Outreach Program Director for the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners.  She has been in the role for only 6 months and she shared some exciting new initiatives that will help the ever more diverse residents of Gwinnett County feel included in the workings of their county.  Ms. Hendrickson described the new Citizens Academy, a 10 week program where business owners, county residents, and others come together in a class of 30 to learn more about how the county government works.  Meeting from 6 – 9 pm on Thursdays, they learn about a new branch of county government each week, from public safety to transportation to water resources.  She also described the International Diversity Festival, designed to bring together public safety officials and community members who may be from countries where there was no trust of those officials.  The goal of the program is to help residents understand how public safety works in the county and to build trust between the community and officials.  Despite being a one-woman office, Ms. Hendrickson described several initiatives that will help county residents understand their county government better and participate in it more effectively.