Friday 11 October 2013

October 11 - Regular meeting of the Rotary E-Club of the Caribbean, 7020 for the week beginning Friday, October 11



To "attend" the meeting, scroll down the screen, review all the information from top to bottom, view all the videos, read all the information, and enjoy your time here with us at our Rotary meeting.




Dear Fellow Rotarians, visitors and guests!

WELCOME TO OUR E-CLUB!

Thank you for stopping by our club meeting!  We hope you will enjoy your visit.

Our E-Club banner is shown at left!  Please send us a virtual copy of your club banner and we will send you a copy of our new club banner in exchange.  We will also display your club banner proudly on our meeting website. 

We are now officially a fully-fledged chartered Rotary Club in District 7020.  Our charter date is August 12, 2013.  We hope you will find the content of our meeting enlightening and will give us the benefit of your opinion on the content.

October is Rotary's Vocational Service Month!  October 24 is World Polio Day.

Visiting Rotarians.  Click this link to Apply for a Make-up.  We will send you and your club secretary a make-up confirmation.
Active MembersClick for Attendance Record.  
Happy Hour Hangout.  Happy Hour Hangout.  Our Happy Hour Hangout on a Saturday morning is early enough so that you can join before your day gets away from you.
We meet for a live chat and sometimes business discussion.  If you are interested in dropping by, please click the link below.  Morning coffee is on the house!  (Your house, that is...)  Hope to see you there!
Please note:  Now, attending our HHH will earn you a make-up!
The link to the Happy Hour Hangout for Saturday is at the bottom of this meeting. 

Interested in joining us? Click the link Membership Application and Information.

Our President, Kitty, would now like to welcome you to this week's meeting.  Please listen in...




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ROTARY E-CLUB OF THE CARIBBEAN, 7020

 

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ABCs OF ROTARY (Cliff Dochterman)

Cliff Dochterman
RI President, 1992-93

Public Relations of Rotary

Historically, Rotarians perpetuated a myth that Rotary should not seek publicity, but rather let our good works speak for themselves.

A 1923 policy stating that "publicity should not be the primary goal of a Rotary club in selecting an activity" of community service, was frequently interpreted to mean that Rotary clubs should avoid publicity and public relations efforts. Actually, the 1923 statement further observed that "as a means of extending Rotary's influence, proper publicity should be given to a worthwhile project well carried out."

A more modern public relations philosophy was adopted in the mid-1970s which affirms that "good publicity, favorable public relations and a positive image are desirable and essential goals for Rotary" if it is to foster understanding, appreciation and support for its Object and programs and to broaden Rotary's service to humanity.  Active public relations is vital to the success of Rotary.

A service project well carried out is considered one of the finest public relations messages of Rotary.  It is essential that rotary clubs make every effort to inform the public about their service projects which have been well performed.

As Rotary clubs and districts consider effective public relations, it is important to remember that when Rotarians think of Rotary, we think of our noble goals and motives.  But when the world thinks of Rotary, it can only think of our actions and the service we have performed.

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THE GORGEOUS SUN CAN BE HARMFUL  

Protect yourself from UV rays

  • Use lots of sunscreen with an SPF 15 or higher and "broad spectrum"
  • Apply sunscreen generously and often
  • Cover up with wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, and clothing that is loose fitting and tightly woven
  • Seek shade between 11:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. when the sun is strongest and the UV Index is high
  • Avoid artificial tanning equipment


Check your skin often.  If you see any of the following, report to your doctor:


  • changes in the shape, colour or size of birthmarks or moles
  • sores that don't heal
  • patches of skin that bleed, itch, or become red and bumpy


Protect yourself from the sun for the rest of your life.  Visit our Sun Safety page on myhealthunit.ca.  No tan is worth dying for.


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PUBLIC IMAGE  - WE ARE WHAT OTHERS SAY WE ARE...


by Carlos Giraldo

Let’s face it; we do judge a book by its cover. It is the human condition to make sense of the world by filling in gaps of knowledge with past experiences.

What comes to your mind when you see a gathering of men in business suits and the majority is gray-haired old men?

Hey, that is not my Rotary club – you’ll say but is that what people “see”?  Is it our public image?

Rotarian C. Lee Smith of the Rotary Club of Polaris in Ohio (District 6690 / Zone 30)

and CEO of a research firm conducted a study last October by interviewing 300 adults in Central /Southeast Ohio (nearly 50/50 male/female) who were not Rotarians and claimed to know a little about Rotary (they may have known someone who is a Rotarian).

His research findings identified the following top 10 perceptions about Rotary:

1.       “Rotary is an old boys club”
2.       “Rotary is only for business people”
3.       “Rotary is not very diverse”
4.       “Rotary isn’t much fun”
5.       “Rotary must invite you to participate”
6.       “Rotarians care about the community”
7.       “Rotarians are honest”
8.       “Rotarians are social and outgoing”
9.       “Rotarians are leaders”
10.      “Many would consider Rotary, if asked”

 Looking at the list I think you will agree with me that 6-10 describes the organization well but we have a challenge with 1-5.

Is there anything my Rotary club, your Rotary club can do to change some of these misconceptions?

Lee does a great job in his presentation because he actually shares ideas on how to change the public’s image.  To avoid the “Rotary is an old boys club” he suggests presenting stories to the media avoiding photos with older men, quoting females in press releases and promoting involvement and activities of younger members in the club.  CLICK HERE for the complete PDF of his presentation.  It is great information you can share with your club.

But I don’t want to leave you thinking that this is it.  Public image is created from the inside out and it requires a disciplined approach.  In other words, our Rotary club must adopt a plan and implement it.


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RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS 




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LISTEN TO A GROUP OF YOUNG ORPHANS SINGING IN KENYA






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OUR ROTARY DISTRICT 7020 IS CONDUCTING A SURVEY

The survey is called TELL US.  Here is our District Governor, Jeremy Hurst, explaining the survey - and it's only a "sound bite" - under 20 seconds!








Click this link to begin the survey.  If you do that now, then don't forget to click your browser's BACK button to return to the meeting.

The link will appear at the end of the meeting as well - for your convenience.

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COMPONENTS OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

To understand what public relations entails, it helps to break it down into its separate components:

  • Understanding news
  • PR writing
  • Media relations
  • External relations
  • Nontraditional media

What is News?

News has been described as extraordinary things happening to ordinary people and ordinary things happening to extraordinary people.  The following elements are considered by many to make up "news."

Immediacy

Timing, or immediacy, is important to getting your story in the media.  Using words like today, yesterday, early this morning and tomorrow are all examples of using immediacy.  Reporting something that has just happened or is about to happen is critical for a story to become news.

Proximity

If the story you are pitching happened outside your community, city, state, or country, would you be interested in reading about it?  By asking this simple question, you can tell if your story is newsworthy.  Newspapers and other media sources largely focus on hometown and regional stories.  The more localized a story is, the greater the chance it will be used.

Prominence

Does your story feature public figures or officials, people of renown, or those who pique curiosity?  In general, such people of influence can make the news.  to qualify your club's visitor or speaker must be able to gain the readers' attention either by reputation or by the topic being discussed.

Singularity

In many places in the world, the unusual and the unexpected often make news.  For example, if your club  has accomplished a challenging or unusual project in your community or another part of the world or if one of your members has performed an incredible service, be sure to use this angle to create a news piece.

Conflict

Unfortunately, conflict is one element that makes headlines worldwide  Be proactive and share what your club is doing to build goodwill and peace in the world.  An op-ed piece in response to a recent story on conflict would be a good start.

Emotional appeal

Often called human interest stories, news pieces that elicit the reader's sympathy or other emotional responses make great feature-type stories.  Does your club have a compelling story that will capture the interest of the general public as well as Rotary club members?

Consequence

For a story to show consequence, it must be important to a vast number of readers.  Does your club's story affect other people's lives?  Try to focus on the efforts and reactions of one or two people to humanize the story as much as possible.  share your club's efforts on polio eradication, clean water, environmental stewardship, or other critical issues to demonstrate that if Rotary were not active in this area, there would be negative consequences.

Experience shows clubs have been most successful in promoting the following types of Rotary stories:

  • Outstanding volunteers
  • Interactions between people in developed and developing countries
  • Local Rotary or Rotary Foundation projects
  • Rotary International studies and exchange program participants (Youth Exchange students, Rotary World Peace Fellows, Ambassadorial Scholars, or Group Study Exchange team members)
  • Human interest stories about people who benefited from Rotary service
  • PolioPlus activities, particularly in polio-endemic areas


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WHAT PAUL HARRIS SAID 



Those who have Rotary's interests at heart trust that we may always continue to view it and its children, the other so-called service clubs, as contributions merely to social progress within our chosen sphere; that we may view ourselves and our work in proper perspective; that we may never become complacent; that we may stand ready to face adversity or prosperity, war or peace; that our thoughts may never become crystallized; that we may ever continue to grow.

This is a changing world; we must be prepared to change with it.  the story of Rotary will have to be rewritten again and again.

---This Rotarian Age

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HAPPY HOUR HANGOUT - October

Please join us for these special presentations at the HHH in October.  Please plan to give our guest speakers a very warm welcome.!



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WITNESS TO HISTORY

The first Rotary club in Ukraine was chartered in 1992, mere months after the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union. Twenty years later, young people have embraced Rotary through 24 Rotaract clubs across the country.

While many of them focus on the challenges facing Ukraine today, members of the Rotaract Club of Kyiv Multinational – one of four in the capital city – take time to honor their elders. For nearly three years, they’ve been visiting a nursing home in Peremoha, about 40 miles from Kyiv.

The village’s elderly residents have lived through a tumultuous century: the brutal German invasion and retreat during World War II, years of Soviet occupation and the struggle for independence, and the transition to a market economy in the 1990s. “These are the people who did their best for future generations, for us, to live in a free country,” says past club president Taras Mytkalyk. “We wanted to fill their lives with a feeling of being needed.”

Now those future generations are finding an outlet to give back through Rotaract. “Young people in Ukraine are attracted to this movement because they see the results of their work,” Mytkalyk says. “There’s no need to wait for somebody's approval or to go through bureaucratic procedures—they can just go out and do good, while having fun along the way.”

Click this link to view a short video.  Don't forget to click your browser's BACK button to return to the meeting.

By Sallyann Price
This story originally appeared in the March 2013 issue of The Rotarian
21-AUG-2013


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ROTARY BASICS - 

HE PROFITS MOST WHO SERVES (THE) BEST  (Revised 2004)

When the first Rotary clubs were formed at the end of the first decade of The 20th century, they were almost all unashamedly business orientated.

Members would recount dealings with fellow members, and in some clubs, these were even recorded in a "Transactions Book."    There was a feeling, however, that the efforts of such a group of worthy and influential men should be put to more charitable use in their communities, and  "Service" became a key word in Rotary.

In 1909, Rotary adopted the motto - "He  profits most who serves best."  This slogan had originally been devised by Arthur Sheldon, in a journal he edited, called "The Business Philosopher."  Because it appeared to give an ethical tone to an organization that was predominantly there for mutual business opportunities, this motto caused much criticism.

Curiously, although Sheldon was involved in the starting of clubs in Britain, British Rotarians never really took on the motto.  There seems to have been an in-built antagonism to imported slogans, although the British clubs were happy enough to give "service" and their efforts particularly during the two world wars, amply testified to this.

As a matter of interest, in 1949, RIBI actually decided officially not to promote the slogan on the grounds that it appeared to give undue emphasis to "profit."  While the rest of Rotary continued to use the slogan - indeed it still appears on the website of such clubs as Salida RC -  there was a growing feeling that some modification was needed, if only to the word  "He"!!

Thus in 2004, the Council on Legislation decided to change the motto to "They profit most who serve best," thereby removing gender-specific terminology.

In practice, this slogan is rarely used in Rotary although it is still a Secondary motto.

...www.rotaryfirst100.org

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ROTARY ANTHEM





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COUPLE VENTURE OUTSIDE COMFORT ZONE TO BRING AID TO UGANDA

Seated in a circle of men, women, and children at the base of a sprawling fig tree in the remote Ugandan village of Oduworo, Rotary members Steve and Vicky Wallace ask the villagers about their needs. At least a thousand people have come together at this “meeting tree,” and agree that everyone wants clean water, better food, medical care, and vocational training, especially for the young.

The journey that led Steve and Vicky to Oduworo began with a polio immunization trip to northern Nigeria in 2005.

At left - A young man installs a solar panel on a thatched roof, which when connected to solar lights inside the hut, will extend the villagers’ day by three to four hours.

The Wallaces – members of the Rotary Club of Lake Elsinore, California, and Rotary Foundation Major Donors – had rarely traveled outside the United States, but the experience  would change their lives.

“We were not ready for it in any way,” Vicky recalls. “Polio sufferers crawling in the dirt, children digging through garbage for something to eat.” When they returned to their sunny California suburb, they stayed home for four days and revised their plans for the future.

“We knew we were going to downsize our lives,” explains Steve, past governor of Rotary District 5330, “and do humanitarian service from then on.”

Two years later, the district’s multiyear project committee asked the Wallaces to get the district involved in an international service effort. There was a single stipulation: They had to choose a village that had never received any outside help.

After seeing five other potential project sites in four countries, the couple traveled to Oduworo, where the need was great.

The villagers were sick, malnourished, and so lethargic, Vicky says, “they just sat there all day with their heads in their hands.” Malaria was rampant. The villagers existed on scraps of food and drank from a contaminated water supply. The nearest potable water source was 2 miles away on foot.

They had no farming tools and no livestock. The village still had not recovered from devastating raids of the past decades, after which anyone who knew how to raise crops either had been killed or had run off. The Wallaces learned that the survivors of Oduworo called their home “the forgotten village.”

TAPPING INTO LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

“Vicky and I were determined to respect and to help preserve the culture of people wherever we went, and to not rush to impose solutions,” says Steve. “Our first goal for Oduworo was a fresh water supply, but the elders had to decide on it, not us. In time, I offered a proposal: If they’d dig 10 latrines, we’d provide two boreholes for new wells. The elders met for half a day, then came back and announced, ‘We accept your deal.’”

So began Oduworo’s transformation. With support from Mark Howison, 2007-08 governor of District 5330, the Wallaces helped start a Rotary Community Corps in the village, which has advised the Rotary members on local needs.

Clubs in the district have raised about $23,000 for projects in the village. A portion has gone toward agricultural training; villagers have learned how to use farm tools and 40 people enrolled in an organic farming class last year. “When we arrived in Oduworo,” Steve recalls, “they were digging seed furrows with sticks and twigs.”

Throughout the process, the Rotary Club of Kampala-West has provided critical support. Club members have worked with District 5330 to obtain Rotary Foundation grants for water and sanitation projects, including one to repair nine broken borehole wells and to provide vocational training to villagers so they could construct water tanks.

The Wallaces return to Oduworo every year. In 2009 when they arrived with Howison and his wife, Barbara, and Rotary members Gerry and Paula Porter, over 1,500 people turned out to greet them. A party erupted. An elder told the Wallaces that he had never expected to see a celebration in his village. And he had something to say about the numerous villager projects under way: “You didn’t bring us a fish,” he told them with a broad smile. “You brought us a fishing line. We thank you.”

By Stephen Yafa
This story originally appeared in the August 2012 issue of The Rotarian
6-AUG-2013




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ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD

Given Tablets but not teachers, Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves
A bold experiment by the One Laptop Per Child organization has shown “encouraging” results.
By David Talbot on October 29, 2012
www.technologyreview.com
WHY IT MATTERS

Around 100 million first-grade-aged children lack access to schools. A foundation is testing whether poor children who are given computers and learning software can teach themselves.

At left - Tablet test: Nicholas Negroponte, founder of One Laptop Per Child, describes experiments involving children in Ethiopia at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference.

With 100 million first-grade-aged children worldwide having no access to schooling, the One Laptop Per Child organization is trying something new in two remote Ethiopian villages—simply dropping off tablet computers with preloaded programs and seeing what happens.

 The goal: to see if illiterate kids with no previous exposure to written words can learn how to read all by themselves, by experimenting with the tablet and its preloaded alphabet-training games, e-books, movies, cartoons, paintings, and other programs.

Early observations are encouraging, said Nicholas Negroponte, OLPC’s founder, at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference last week.

The devices involved are Motorola Xoom tablets—used together with a solar charging system, which Ethiopian technicians had taught adults in the village to use.  Once a week, a technician visits the villages and swaps out memory cards so that researchers can study how the machines were actually used.

After several months, the kids in both villages were still heavily engaged in using and recharging the machines, and had been observed reciting the “alphabet song,” and even spelling words. One boy, exposed to literacy games with animal pictures, opened up a paint program and wrote the word “Lion.”

The experiment is being done in two isolated rural villages with about 20 first-grade-aged children each, about 50 miles from Addis Ababa. One village is called Wonchi, on the rim of a volcanic crater at 11,000 feet; the other is called Wolonchete, in the Great Rift Valley. Children there had never previously seen printed materials, road signs, or even packaging that had words on them, Negroponte said.

Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android,” Negroponte said. “Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.”

Elaborating later on Negroponte’s hacking comment, Ed McNierney, OLPC’s chief technology officer, said that the kids had gotten around OLPC’s effort to freeze desktop settings. “The kids had completely customized the desktop—so every kids’ tablet looked different.  We had installed software to prevent them from doing that,” McNierney said. “And the fact they worked around it was clearly the kind of creativity, the kind of inquiry, the kind of discovery that we think is essential to learning.”

“If they can learn to read, then they can read to learn,” Negroponte said (see “Emtech Preview: Another Way to Think About Learning”).

In an interview after his talk, Negroponte said that while the early results are promising, reaching conclusions about whether children could learn to read this way would require more time. “If it gets funded, it would need to continue for another a year and a half to two years to come to a conclusion that the scientific community would accept,” Negroponte said. “We’d have to start with a new village and make a clean start.”

The idea of dropping off tablets outside of the context of schools is a new paradigm for OLPC. Through the late 2000s, the company was focused on delivering a custom miniaturized and ruggedized laptop, the XO, of which about 3 million have been distributed to kids in 40 countries. Deployments went to schools including ones in Peru (see “Una Laptop por Nino”).

Giving computers directly to poor kids without any instruction is even more ambitious than OLPC’s earlier pushes. “What can we do for these 100 million kids around the world who don’t go to school?” McNierney said. “Can we give them tool to read and learn—without having to provide schools and teachers and textbooks and all that?”


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This autumn we can look forward to falling leaves and rising gas prices.  We`ll be raking it up while the oil companies are raking it in.



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END POLIO NOW

Since 1985 Rotary has led the battle against polio, and kept the pressure on as worldwide cases plummeted from 350,000 per year to several hundred. When India went off the list of endemic countries in 2012, we took one more step toward eradicating a human disease from the earth for only the second time in history. Now, Rotary and its partners are This Close to making that dream a reality.

Click this link to view a short video.  Don't forget to click your browser's BACK button to return to the meeting.

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SPEAKER - PHOTOS OF OUR WORLD

Photographer Camille Seaman has been chasing storms for 5 years. In this talk she shows stunning, surreal photos of the heavens in tumult.

TED Senior Fellow Camille Seaman photographs big ice and big clouds.

Camille Seaman takes photographs all over the world using digital and film cameras in multiple formats. Since 2003, her work has concentrated on the fragile environment of the polar regions. Her current project concerns the beauty of natural environments in Siberia.

Seaman's photographs have been published in Newsweek, Outside, Zeit Wissen, Men's Journal and more, and she has self-published many books on themes like “My China” and “Melting Away: Polar Images” through Fastback Creative Books, a company that she co-founded. In 2008, she was honored with a one-person exhibition, The Last Iceberg, at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC.

Watch her presentations below:







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A NEW LOOK FOR THE ROTARY.ORG WEBSITE



My Rotary Video Tour from Rotary Webinars on Vimeo.


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A 240-YEAR-OLD AUTOMATON



Click this link to view the video about this amazing machine - and how old it is!

Don't forget to click your browser's BACK button to return to the meeting.









Amazing!

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PART 2 OF AN 8-PART DOCUMENTARY - Gangs in Paradise

We can talk about this in the next few weeks...

 

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OUR HAPPY HOUR HANGOUT FROM LAST WEEK

Discussion with PAG Haresh Ramchandani from Jamaica - for those of you who missed it.  The video runs about 45 minutes on the topics:
  • Visioning
  • Grants
  • 2014 International Convention in Australia



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TO END OUR MEETING

To end our meeting, please recite aloud (on your honour!) the Rotary Four-Way Test of the things we think, say, and do.  

Dr. Bob Scott - Chair of the International PolioPlus Committee - leads us.  Dr. Scott was participating in the recent District 7010 Conference held in Orillia, Ontario, Canada.  He was gracious enough to stop and let me record the Four-Way Test!  




1.  Is it the TRUTH?
2.  Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3.  Will it BUILD GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
4.  Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
















...and official close of meeting





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Thank you for stopping by our E-club meeting!   We wish you well in the next week in all that you do for Rotary!

The meeting has now come to an end.  Please do have a safe and happy week!  If you have enjoyed our E-club meeting, please leave a comment below.

Rotary cheers!

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Visiting Rotarians.  Click this link to Apply for a Make-up.  We will send you and your club secretary a make-up confirmation.
Please consider a donation to our Club.  Just as any Rotarian visiting a Rotary Club would be expected to make a donation, we hope you will consider a donation to our Rotary E-Club of the Caribbean, 7020.   Please click the button below:


 

Active Members.  Click to indicate your Attendance.   

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TO COMPLETE THE DISTRICT SURVEY - 




Click this link to begin the survey.

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HAPPY HOUR HANGOUT – Wednesday evening, October 16

• 8:00 p.m. Atlantic Time
• 8:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time



Rotary E-Club of the Caribbean, 7020 is inviting you to a scheduled Happy Hour Hangout.

Join from a PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone or Android device:

• Please click this URL to start or join. https://zoom.us/j/359461941
• Or, go to https://zoom.us/join and enter meeting ID: 359 461 941 


Join from dial-in phone line:

• Call +1(424)203-8450 (US/Canada only).
• For Global dial-in numbers: https://zoom.us/teleconference
• Meeting ID: 359 461 941
• Participant ID: Shown after joining the meeting



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