Our Program on March 7, 2023 was Angelina Amerigo accompanied by her “Momager” Melinda. Angelina is the Communications and 
Marketing Director of the Rotaract eClub for the Environment: Focus on Pollution Reduction. She is also a talented dancer and the current Miss West Central with the Miss America organization and received $12,000 towards her college education and working towards being the next Miss Minnesota. Her journey started back in 2019-20 becoming Miss Heart of the Lakes (2nd place). Then in 2020-21 she became Miss Midwest (1st runner up), and now 2022-23 is Miss West Central. With being a local title holder she has the opportunity to speak on a platform of her choice. Her social impact initiative is to bring the topic of the over-usage of plastic alive! She believes it’s time to clean up our oceans, rivers, lakes and protect our precious marine life as plastic pollution is not only affecting the state of the earth we live in but is affecting a large list of precious marine life! This young woman was amazing, articulate, smart and beautiful to boot!
Marketing Director of the Rotaract eClub for the Environment: Focus on Pollution Reduction. She is also a talented dancer and the current Miss West Central with the Miss America organization and received $12,000 towards her college education and working towards being the next Miss Minnesota. Her journey started back in 2019-20 becoming Miss Heart of the Lakes (2nd place). Then in 2020-21 she became Miss Midwest (1st runner up), and now 2022-23 is Miss West Central. With being a local title holder she has the opportunity to speak on a platform of her choice. Her social impact initiative is to bring the topic of the over-usage of plastic alive! She believes it’s time to clean up our oceans, rivers, lakes and protect our precious marine life as plastic pollution is not only affecting the state of the earth we live in but is affecting a large list of precious marine life! This young woman was amazing, articulate, smart and beautiful to boot! The slogan of her advocacy is “One Bottle, One Straw and One Bag at a Time.” She pointed out that there are 5 Ocean Garbage Patches that are part of the Gyre which is a swirling vortex of ocean current that consists of plastics and floating waste products. Our Mississippi River contributes 40% of plastic pollution in the Golf of Mexico today. Angelina stresses that we can do something about this problem that is also affecting aquatic and marine life here and in the World. She says, “ The answer is to Educate, Inform and Act!” She says that we can educate ourselves to understand what the problem is and then to inform our communities through social and printed media. “And then we need to act by recycling one bottle, one straw and bag at a time!” Angelina then listed some startling statistics and what to do to counteract these polluter. First, 100 Billion plastic bags are discarded each year and we can reduce this by using reusable bags. Second, 500 Million one-use straws are discared each year so use reusable straws. And then finally there are 481.6 Billion plastic bottles discarded yearly so let’s use reusable bottles! She then held a contest on the number of items we personally recycle and use and Randy Schumacher was the grand prize winner with 16 nonpolluting practices.
She ended her presentation by saying, “It was Rotary that started me on this amazing journey” and to practice “One Bottle, One Straw and One Bag at a time” and urged our club members to support her in her bid to become Miss Minnesota. 
r Families for Respite and Hospice for Kids. We were literally moved to tears as she described her passion, love, care and efforts to bring hospice care for kids here in Minnesota. She said, “Crescent Cove offers care and support to children and young adults with a shortened life-expectancy, and their families who love them.” Katie went on to say, “Crescent Cove Respite & Hospice Home for Kids is a vibrant and joyful home-away-from home for kids with life-threatening conditions, where each moment is embraced and celebrated. All services and stays provided at Crescent Cove to kids and families are at no out-of-pocket cost thanks to the generosity of donors who make this possible.” Katie explained that pediatric hospice care is virtually nonexistent in our country and does not receive government support which is a goal she is working on with the Minnesota Legislature. 
Our Program on Tuesday, February 7, 2023 was our Annual Many Hands Many Meals club meeting and community service project for February. The event was held this year at the newly renovated Excelsior United Methodist Church on 3rd Avenue in Excelsior rather than Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church. Community Service Director Tiffany Frazier arranged the food packing service project working with Sarah Johnson, the Youth Minister & Community Engagement Director at EUMC. Twenty-seven people took part in in this popular club service project that lasted just over one hour and packed 23 boxes to be shipped to Sierra Leone in Africa.
ard and 5” of snow! Prior to Scott’s presentation we inducted Keith Stuessi as our newest member. Tim Litfin handled the formal induction and Garry Thompson introduced Keith to the members and is his club sponsor. Keith gave some brief comments and was unanimously voted in as our 4th new member since July.
Scott Searl is well known to many of us as a pastor in our community for many years and is now the Director of Philanthropy at ICA. Scott started by saying ICA is known as a food shelf but it is much more that. He said, “ICA is all about food, Jobs and Housing.” He started by talking about the food distribution and that ICA distributes 8,000 pounds/day and serves 938 families. Coming out of Covid with federal programs ending there is a historic demand for food and assistance. Scott noted that qualifying recipients still need to make an appointment and that 20% of the people they are serving are coming from outside the traditional boundary lines of ICA. They get their food to distribute from three sources: Lund’s and Beverly’s provide 1/3; rescued produce is 1/3; and ICA buys fresh produce for the other 1/3rd. Due to the economy and inflation the cost of buying these things costs ICA and additional $200,000 to $300,000 which is an increase of 33% over budget! Now ICA’s volunteers make home deliveries to shut in’s and disabled and often those volunteers find out that recipients they deliver to do not even have the basic implements to even open the delivered canned and fresh foods so they supply them also.
howed the website he and Scott Zerby did which features each of this year’s Rotary Events on our revolving slide show (Check our website at 
a good amount of humor! His parents married young and he was born on 12-4-1965 and is the 3rd of 4 children. His sports of choice were Hockey and Baseball and a lifelong love of fishing. He graduated from MHS in 1983 and got his Bachelor’s Degree from the U of M in History in 1987. He married his wife Beth, who he met in college, on 9-19-1987at Trinity Episcopal Church in Excelsior and was the 4th generation in his family to be married there. They have two sons – Alexander and Andrew. 
club to attend Rotary’s Camp Enterprise. Camp Enterprise is a three-day camp that took place in November for high school juniors and seniors designed to introduce students to the free enterprise system and encourage entrepreneurship and ethical business practices. The experience is often life changing. Bryce is a senior at Minnetonka High School and enrolled in the Advantage Program. Bryce thanked our club for the scholarship and described being one of the 84 participants in this year’s program. He mentioned the five entrepreneurs that spoke to the kids and also the three day task in teams to come up with a business plan and then sell it to the overall group. He found it to be fascinating and his group won the competition and he received a $1,000 scholarship for his efforts. We believe that this young man has great potential! .png)
-300dpi-(780-x-1200pix)-web-raster-online-use-(not-print)/ExcRotaryLogo-WEB-RGB.jpg){kind=link}
/ExcRotaryLogo-WEB-RGB.png){kind=link}