Minutes from Ann Arbor Rotary Club’s Feb. 16, 2022 Meeting during RI Month of Peace and Conflict Resolution

President Susan Froelich

NB: Starting March 2, our club will be meeting again at the Michigan Union. Members may also attend via Zoom.

Laughter, the sharing of good news, seeing Rosemarie and Don looking rested and sunny from their retreat on Longboat Key, hearing about Fanfan’s immersion into a new video game, and Bob and Ken regaling us with the story of Cecilia Bartoli coming to Dascola Barbers was all part of the meeting-before-the-meeting.

Dawn Johnson guided us all in Zoom etiquette and introduced President Susan who rang the bell to officially begin our meeting. Tom Strode played our National Anthem on his piano.

Arthur Williams gave the inspiring words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars, As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.

We all sang along to the Sam Cooke’s 1964 classic, “Change is Gonna Come,” presented by Joanne Pierson.

President Susan welcomed us all to the meeting and shared that Brendon Chard and Griff McDonald have birthdays this week. Happy Birthday Brendon and Griff!

She also announced that our club has three new members Michelle Deatrick, Edwin Portugal, and Ademola Osofisan. We also have two reinstatement members, Scott Bunnay from Meridian, MS and Karen Driggs from our club.

Dan Lewan

Dan Lewan, co-chair of our club’s International Humanitarian Projects Committee (IHPC) updated us on the many programs our club supports around the world.
There are three types of IHP grants:
1) Club Grant – where our club directly funds and directly oversees projects.
A) Kenya: $1,000 to equip a school with chairs for their auditorium; and
B) Peru: to provide clean water for designated communities in the Amazon.
2) District Grants – where our club allocates funds then applies to Rotary for 50% funding.
A) Ghana: $7,000 to provide ultrasound equipment to a maternal and fetal clinic; and
B) Guatemala: $10,000 to provide solar electricity to power a school, plus water and sanitation (see December 15, 2021 meeting minutes about John Barrie’s presentation about “LaUnilla Solar School Project.”) and
C) Niger: $16,000 to provide solar power to run lighting and refrigeration equipment at a remote health clinic; and
D) Haiti: laptops and solar chargers for nurses in the Haiti Nursing Foundation program; and
E) South Africa: Tutorial and entrepreneurship support via distance learning in under-resourced schools; and
F) UM Roteract: to help fund their on-site trail work and erosion control in a Virginia State Park. This is because of covid, the Rotaracters are not able to do their annual international volunteer work in Central America.
3) Global Grant – projects that bring our club’s contributions to be matched with multiple other clubs, districts, Rotary International, and supporting non-profits along with the host country’s Rotary club.
A) India: Clean water and sanitation in flood-prone area. Just-announced news: This project was just approved for funding and those funds are being collected.  And
B) Ghana: Bore hole well. Kofi Gyan from our club attended the ground breaking representing our club.
Lewan thanked the hard-working members of the IHP Committee and thanked the club for supporting these humanitarian efforts through the GTO.

President Susan was pleased to announce that because the GTO brought in more revenue than projected, an additional $6,500 has been directed to the IHP. At today’s Board Meeting, the Directors voted an additional $8,000 to go to the September 2022 Peace Conference, money to March’s Eradicate Child Hunger Food Drive, and to VITA.

President Susan asked all members to highlight Sunday, June 12 to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the Universal Park at Gallup. Stay tuned for more details.

Rosemarie Rowney

Rosemary Rowney asked the question “what do you see when you close your eyes and see a school?” to introduce speaker Justin Heinze. Dr. Heinze is an educational psychologist and Assistant Professor of Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He serves as the director for the National Center for School Safety, a federally funded training and technical assistance center supporting more than 800 Students, Teachers, Officers and Preventing (STOP) School Violence grantees across the country.

Dr. Heinze provided overview of the gun violence burden in the United States and its disproportionate effect on youth. He discussed schools as both a context for gun violence exposure and victimization, but also as critical settings for intervention. He closed by introducing a model used to characterize injury prevention more broadly and how an example of a multi-faceted violence prevention intervention in schools is applied within that framework.

“Addressing Health Disparities in Youth Gun Violence: Multileval School Climate Intervention.”

Dr. Justin Heinze

Dr. Heinze’s presentation graphed that 40,000 U.S. fatalities occur annually because of firearms: 60% are suicides and 38% are homicides. Beginning in 2017, there were more fatalities from firearms than from motor vehicle collisions. It is the 2nd leading cause of death for children and teens, and a leading cause of death for Black youth under 24. In 2010-2019 there were 21.9 incidents/year of active shooter incidents. Because of limited funding for research, gun violence is an overlooked epidemic.
The University of Michigan is doing Firearm Prevention Research and has centers with particularized foci in Marquette, Muskegon, Grand Rapids, Battle Creek, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Flint, Saginaw and Grayling.

Dr. Heinze noted that since Sandy Hook, many schools are not able to teach the basics, “we’ve been learning how to hide,” to quote a principal of a middle school near Sandy Hook. He noted that since 1970, there have been 1,316 school shootings. Active shooters tend to be single shooters with a handgun and 55% are students or former students of that school.

School homicides only represent 1.2% of all homicides among youth 5-18. Given that statistic, there is little, if any, evidence or guidance to show that arming schoolteachers, metal detectors, locked entrances, zero tolerance, school resource officers, active shooter training, hemorrhage control training, bullying suppression mitigates school killings.

Dr. Heinze described a model of holistic interventions that successfully combine mental health first aid, restorative justice and crime prevention through environmental design to create a positive school climate. This multi-faceted violence prevention intervention in schools is successful.

Next week our speaker will be Professor Derek Peterson, UM Dept. of History, on “Repatriation of Historical/Cultural Objects; A Study in Restorative Justice.”

President Susan closed the meeting with the Arabian quote: “He who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything.”

 

Reporter: Mary Steffek Blaske
Photographer: Fred Beutler