Our Program on November 7, 2023 was the smart, talented and beautiful Angelina Amerigo our Miss Minnesota as she prepares for the Miss America Contest in on January 7, 2024. She was again accompanied by her “Momager” Melinda. As you will recall her connection with Rotary is that 
Angelina is the Communications and Marketing Director of the Rotaract eClub for the Environment Focusing on Pollution Reduction of plastic bottles, straws and bags.
Angelina is the Communications and Marketing Director of the Rotaract eClub for the Environment Focusing on Pollution Reduction of plastic bottles, straws and bags.Angelina then talked about her run for Miss Minnesota and wat a great experience it was getting to know many of the other contestants and all the activities that surrounded the pageant. Melinda privately said that her daughter had virtually won most all of the pageants competitions and most importantly the talent with her dancing, the interview and evening dree competition as well as other contests and received the prized scholarship to help her continue in her college education. With being the Miss Minnesota title holder she is excited to continue using her platform to speak on reducing the pollution of plastic in our state and nation. 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!
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!”
She then talked about her busy schedule of appearances as Miss Minnesota and preparation for the Miss America Pageant. She then did Q&A answering many questions from members. She thanked our club for their support and the generous donation and ended 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 club members to support her to become Miss Miss America in 2024!