CART Program
CART stands for Coins for Alzheimer's Research. Veteran member Johnny Wilson has been instrumental in advocating the CART program in our club. Smyrna Rotary's final contribution was over $1,564.21 pushing the district over the $24,000 mark. As of the writing of this report, the Smyrna Rotary Club once again is "Number 1" in District 6900 in contributions to the CART Fund.
District Governor Elect, Roy Strickland, has appointed Johnny Wilson, Smyrna Rotarian, as Chairman of the CART Fund for Dist. 6900 for 2009-10. Plans are underway to have a CART Chairmen in every Rotary Club in District 6900 by the end of 2009-10 Rotary year. As of the end of 2007-08 only 23 clubs of the 70 Rotary Clubs in Dist. 6900 contributed to the CART Fund. As of this date in 2009 we have 25 Clubs that have given to CART and more will come.
With the beginning of personalizing the CART Buckets with a picture of Rotarians or their family that have died with Alzheimer's, at the Smyrna Rotary Club, the dollar amount has increased. This program, as well as many more, will be introduced to all Rotary Clubs in District 6900 in the coming year.

Smyrna Rotary Foundation
One of our objectives this year is to create a permanent foundation. This is so that we can raise funds not only from within our club but also frmo corporate sponsors and from the community. With this foundation, we will be able to fund a larger number of projects, and any monies donated to the Smyrna Rotary Foundation will be tax deductible. Smyrna Rotarians Jeffrey Tucker, Johnny Wilson and Ken Henry are spearheading this project.

Cobb Christmas
Every year, Smyrna Rotarians hold one of their meetings at Jim Miller Park in Cobb Country. All of us gather there to do things like pack food or gifts for Cobb County’s needy children. We pack food or gifts, have lunch and then pack more food or gifts. It is a great bonding experience and we all have a wonderful time.

Smyrna Citizen of the Year
Every year, Smyrna Rotarians honor one of the community's citizens in recognition for their ef-forts to make Smyrna a better city, a better place to live, philanthropic or hand’s on community service and for other reasons.

Smyrna Rotary contributes $1,000 to Rotary International in that person's name and then honors them with a lunch built around them and a presentation they make. This year we have selected Mike Terry. Cathy Lipsett recommended him saying:

I would like to submit Mike Terry as a possible Citizen of the Year. He has been the driving force behind the restoration of the Taylor Brawer House. Also a big part of this project was Lillie Wood, who, I believe, chairs the foundation. Mike has been the one to do physical labor as well as coordinate the project and has become a historian of the house. Thank you for considering Mike for this award. He is involved in other activities in addition to the Taylor-Brawner House. Until recently he was appointed to the Smyrna Planning Commission. Now he has been appointed by Bob Ott to the County Planning Commission. He is an active member of the Golden K Kiwanis and I know has been involved in many civic activities with it and in other ways.

Keep Smyrna Beautiful - Adopt-A-Mile
The Rotary Club of Smyrna has been trying to become more involved in the community. Word of mouth, as well as member visibility, can be a nice recruiting tool. Plus, at the same time, we can do some good in our own backyards. President Narayan Sengupta asked John Hubbard to take the role of emissary between our Club and the Keep Smyrna Beautiful organization which oversees Adopt-A-Mile. He gladly accepted and now we meet as a Club, quarterly, to pick up trash and debris from our 1 mile stretch of Windy Hill - a very busy road. To get involved, let Smyrna Rotarian John Hubbard know. Participants include Mike Hammock, Ty Cobb, Steve Kimble, Alexander Jahn, Steve Clair, Narayan Sengupta and others.

Veterans Day in Smyrna
This year, the Smyrna Rotary Club held an intimate celebration for Veterans Day on November 11, 2008 – the 90th Anniversary of the End of World War I. We planted 270 American flags on the lawn of the Smyrna Veterans Memorial. At 11 am with a flyover by three UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters started our ceremony.

Smyrna Mayor Pro Tem Wade Lnenicka and Gordon Jones, Director of the Atlanta History Cen-ter spoke as did quite a number of veterans when the microphone was passed around. [Read more...]

Support of the Annual Programs Fund
On July 1, 2008, the very first day of the Rotary year, Smyrna Rotary became a 100% EREY and 100% Sustaining Member Rotary Club. We have maintained our giving throughout the year and Smyrna Rotary today ranks among the top five clubs in the District in per capita giving to the Annual Programs Fund of The Rotary Foundation.

Smyrna Rotarians are active in the Paul Harris Society and the Governor's Circle.

We continue our strong support of The Rotary Foundation. In 2004, Smyrna Rotary became the first club in District 6900 to be a 100% Paul Harris Fellow Club. Since 2006, our club has been one of the fastest growing Rotary clubs in the world. We have more than doubled in size, yet 50% of our members are multiple Paul Harris Fellows.

Medical Mission to Kenya
This past year we teamed up with the Rotary Club of East Cobb, GA to provide funds for a medical mission to Kenya. To read Rotarian Sally Platt's blog about the project, click here: http://sallyskenyablog.blogspot.com.

US Marine Corp Afghanistan Project
We are happy to give a report of our Smyrna Rotary US Marine Corp Afghanistan Project. With Rotary generosity the club raised over $950 Dollars to send requested items to some great troops serving in Afghanistan. Today three boxes were shipped with over 137 pounds of goods. These gifts were boxed up, and each one inventoried for US Customs with the appropriate forms. Items included Sun screen, toothpaste and mouth wash, socks, face soap, Visine, vitamins, energy bars, mints, trail mix, sunflower seeds, beef jerky, spices and some Georgia Peanuts. All these items were their specific requests! These boxes are being sent to 1st Lt Frank Wilson who with the help of his gunnery sergeant will evenly split the gifts to the troops. We are honored to coordinate this project and look forward to perhaps hearing from these Marines in the weeks ahead. Smyrna Rotarians Charles Jefts and Raymond Coffman have spearheaded this project.

Puerto Plata Water Project
Our primary function was in partnership with the Rotary Club of Puerto Plata where we have furnished mattresses, mosquito nets, fumigation, and many bio-sand and double bucket water filter systems for schools, clinics, and in homes. The Rotary Club has been able to assist in the building a training school and delivered a van for use in transportation of water filter systems to the jungle area and use as an ambulance. Rotarian Rev. Joey Hatchell has headed this project.

International Academy of Smyrna
The Rotary Club of Smyrna has raised $1500 to buy used books for the International Academy of Smyrna. This program has been completed and was very successful. The International Academy of Smyrna is a new public school that has opened its doors in 2007. In fact, we had originally planned to raise $1250 to purchase 200 books. Lisa Sunday, Mike Hammock, Jeffrey Tucker, Stuart Lance, Larry Gillen and others worked on this project.

We exceeded both objectives ending up with $1500 and purchased 502 books from our book source and another approximately 70 books and 20 magazines from other sources. This is approximately five bookshelves of books! Laura Lyle, the Media Specialist of the school writes:

"I am sooooooooo excited about the titles and inventory purchased through the Rotary Club. Our Media Center is definitely beginning to look like a state of the art Library! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU."

Cavalry Children's Home
The Rotary Club of Smyrna donated 600 books and magazines to the Cavalry Children's Home in 2008. Rotarian Snyder Turner runs the Cavalry Children's home. Johnny Wilson has donated a further 200 or so books to the Cavalry Children's home in September, 2008. Thanks Johnny!

RYLA
The Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) program is being offered to students from Osborne High School. Six students have been identified from the school administration as being ideal candidates for leadership training. A committee of Rotarians will interview the students and select two to represent the Smyrna Rotary in the 2009 RYLA conference. The conference will be held in Americus Georgia from June 27 - 30th and will include leadership training, building self esteem, communication skills and team development.

The Smyrna Rotary club will be sponsoring two students with fees and will include transportation to and from the event. It is the objective of the club to provide leadership skills to promising teens and to promote community involvement within our local schools. Total fees for the conference and transportation are $820 and will be paid through the Rotary local funds. This year is the first time the Smyrna Rotary is participating in the RYLA conference but now that the format is set and the school relationship secured future involvement will happen.

DSG for Birney Elementary School
Grant for Birney Elementary School: In our District Simplified Grant proposal, we had said that we would buy approximately 200 paperback books. In fact, we have purchased approximately 150 books for Brown Elementary School’s media center and class rooms. Our overall objective was to help these at need schools have more books to stock the shelves as well as having more books in the classrooms so that students could read them on an ad hoc basis. We tried to target all different age groups at the school. While we have a tight budget ourselves, we find high quality used books which even include shipping straight to the school. While we purchased some paperback books and some that were rated three stars (on a scale of one to five with five being best), we focused on purchasing hardback books with four or five star ratings. Some books have been new books. Various team members participated in this project including Larry Gillen, Lisa Sunday, Jeffrey Tucker, Dan Hoppe and Narayan Sengupta.

DSG for Brown Elementary School
Grant for Brown Elementary School: This was the same program as the one we did for Birney Elementary School, but we were able to get 350 books for them (thus 500 books between the two schools). We made sure that we had buy-in from the school administration. James Brett Ward, the Principal of Brown Elementary School wrote: Hello Mr. Sengupta,

It was indeed a pleasure to meet you and discuss the proposal for Smyrna Rotary Club to assist Brown Elementary. We welcome the support of your organization and applaud your efforts to make a positive difference in the lives of our children. The idea of giving books to the teachers is a wonderful gesture and it would be a great support for them. I look forward to working with you in the future.

James Brett Ward
Principal
Brown Elementary School

Rotary Scholarship Promotion Drive
We have been promoting all of the Rotary Scholarships including the Ambassadorial Scholarships worth $11,000 to $33,000 thanks to the hard work of our scholarship chair Lisa Sunday. Lisa has diligently reached out to Kennesaw State University, Southern Polytechnic University, Osborne High School (and possibly Campbell High School as well). We had a fantastic candidate a few months ago. And now we have a new one – Monica Quaintance – has a 2370 SAT score, is a soprano, etc., and attends Columbia University. We think that she will make an outstanding candidate.

Creative Writing Contest at Brown Elementary School
Creative Writing Contest at Brown Elementary School – Rotarian Narayan Sengupta was one of three judges who judged a writing contest for Kindergarten through 5th Grade. The judging was done on March 5, 2009 and the winners have been submitted to Cobb County for the county wide judging.

Golden Quill Contest
The Golden Quill Contest is a program we have done for several years at other schools. This year the contest will be at Teasley Elementary School and at Brown Elementary School.

The school we had worked with in the past did not have enough person power to do the Golden Quill Contest again this year. So this looked like it was a dead project. But at the 11th hour, we sought out other schools to do this with and found not one, but two.

The program is led by Smyrna Rotarians David McGinnis, Snyder Turner and George Spears. Here is the brief summary of how it works:

We have a story that is half written which we provide to the 4th Grade teachers.
The teachers hand out a copy to each student.
The kids use their creativity to finish the story writing up to 2 pages.
The teachers provide the best three entries to you who give it to us to judge.

We award the top 1, 2 and 3 stories with little trophies at a grade assembly.
All of the children get a participation certificate.

It has been very successful in the past and apparently it is a great way to encourage kids to get creative. The program is a very low impact project in terms for the principal and staff. But the enthusiasm of the kids for the Golden Quill is something that is quite wonderful to get to see.

Quarterly Student Recognition Day at Brown Elementary School
Quarterly Student Recognition Day at Brown Elementary School on March 27, 2009 and quarterly after that. Smyrna Rotary presents two awards – Most Improved Student and Best Community Service for each class in the school.

Cobb County Top Educators Series
Cobb County School Superintendent Fred Sanderson was our speaker on August 26, 2008. We invited several of the Smyrna Principals to attend and they did. Having the school’s top person speak to us allows us to understand the needs of the schools and also allows us to provide feedback. Cobb County Area Assistant Superintendent Dale Gaddis was our featured speaker for February 24, 2009. Vinings Rotarian and Teasley Elementary Principal Joanne Robblee, Campbell Middle School Principal Denise McGee and Vinings Rotarian and Campbell High School Principal Kehl Arnson were in attendance. Having four such highly esteemed educational leaders at our meeting provides us with a way to hear what is important to them and also for us to better understand how we can be involved. We are also following the Vinings Rotary Club’s lead and doing our utmost to have one or two principals to join the Smyrna Rotary Club. This is due to the vision of past Presidents such as DGE Roy Strickland, the overall district mission of District Governor Ted Propes and the help of our friends such as Joanne Robblee. Currently Campbell Middle School Principal Denise Magee has just joined. Brown Elementary School Principal Brett Ward has attended one meeting and will be attending other meetings. He is considering joining. Literacy is not just for younger children. We are also trying to build bridges with the educational community. Over the past two and a half years since I have been a member, we have had Dr. Lisa Rossbacher, the President of Southern Polytechnic and Dr. Daniel Papp, President of Kennesaw State University as speakers. In fact, Dr. Rossbacher has spoken on two occasions.

GRSP Student – Gunita Zimacka from Latvia
GRSP - Every year Smyrna Rotary sponsors a GRSP student with another Rotary Club in order to build goodwill and fellowship with other parts of the world. We have faithfully supported the GRSP program since 1965 (43 years!) and have listed all past recipients on our website. We have stayed in touch with several of them and even heard from Beat Attinger, our Swiss GRSP Student from 20 years ago. He wrote:

I am 41 now and the Deputy Director of a company called Orell Fussli Security Printing Ltd (www.ofs.ch). We print all the Swiss Banknotes, some banknotes for Singapore and Romania, and for some other countires we are not supposed to disclose. I am about to finish my studies to get my Executive MBA at IMD (IMD was ranked as No 1 in executive development, along with Harvard). My stay at West GA college has been an unforgettable experience and helped me a lot to develop on a personal level.

Our 2006-2007 GRSP Student, Miss Magda Wierowska from Poland, graduated from Southern Polytechnic in 2008. She graduated Cum Laude, received a 'Senior of the Year' President's Award and 'Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges' in recognition of outstanding merit and accomplishment as a student of SPSU. These students live and study in Georgia for the year and teach us about their country and learn about ours.

This year, Smyrna Rotary welcomes our newest scholar, Miss Gunita Zimacka from Latvia for 2008-2009. She attends Southern Polytechnic State University. She is being hosted by past-President Bill Keappler. She has been a featured speaker at our club on November 18, 2008 and has attended several meetings.

Past President Bill Keappler has spearheaded this project for many years now. He also asks that every club member contribute $50 to GRSP and he matches that $1:$1 for each member to bring their total contribution to $100.

Miscellaneous New Generations Projects
These aforementioned projects do not include several projects which are focused on helping students such as the After School Program project we did with the YMCA. We also normally sponsor a Georgia Laws of Life competition at Campbell High School and look forward to resuming this next year.

Money is tight all around, but we have still accomplished a lot just by being resourceful. The experience we have gotten so far has been rather encouraging. We are a small club, but one that has been growing. And as we have grown, we have started to take on more and more projects. Our ambitions to make a huge impact on our community have increased in lockstep with our increase in size. We know that literacy is not just a concern for younger children, but for all ages. And we also realize that literacy isn’t just about having people learn to read, but having people enjoy reading and getting them access to reading materials.

With this in mind, we are already thinking through three additional programs: Car Books (geared towards children while they are going to and from school), a Teacher Recognition program and books for seniors in our beautiful city’s nursing homes. We have had a preliminary discussion with Mary Lou Schlichting at the Woodlawn Ridge Long Term Care Home (64 residents) with this in mind.

Related Websites
www.rotarydistrict6900.org
www.rotary.org