District Conference Report

Among the 300 or so attendees, Emmett's group was made up of Terry and Dottie Jones, Rick Walth and Mary Overstreet, the Pages - Vicky, Dennis, James and Andy, TJ Adams and John and Linda Biggs.

In addition to the Changing of the Guard, where Terry Gilbert takes the reigns of District Governor from Kevin Learned, it was a wonderful celebration of the work of Rotary around the globe.  There are now 33,660 clubs, 531 Districts and over 1.2 million Rotarians! While membership numbers are declining in the North America, Europe, Australia and Japan, they are rapidly growing in Asia, India and Korea. DG Kevin was proud of the work we had done during his tenure. He was proud of the District's governance, which requires no less than 87 Rotarians serving in a variety of capacities and committees, to get the job done!

We heard two inspirational speeches from Chuck Keller, who was RI President in 1987. (Note that 1987 was the year Rotary decided to admit women and kick off the Polio campaign!). He traveled from Pennsylvania to represent RI on behalf of Pres. John Kenny. Chuck explained that membership was down a bit, that RI's financial situation was sound. There 625,000 young people now involved in a variety of Rotary efforts, including Rotaract, Interact, Youth Exchange. The Rotary Foundation focuses on six areas: Water and sanitation, maternal and children's health, basic education, economic and community development, and literacy.

We heard from Dr.Karl Watts, a physician from Boise who was recently national Family Practice Physician of the Year. In addition to his work at his free clinic in Garden City, he has done extensive missionary work in Kenya with the organization he founded, Genesis World Mission.

We heard from Dr. Ighodalo Princewill Oyakhilome, a Rotarian from Nigeria who has done extensive work in improving water quality in rural areas, much of the effort funded with Rotary funds from our District.

We heard from Kristin Armstrong, Idaho's Gold Medal Olympian, with a message to never quit - life is one constant adventure!

We had a presentation from the GSE team from Brazil and our GSE team which has just returned. That was followed by introductions of all the Student Exchange kids, both inbound, outbound and rebound. Our own James Page was there, too!

A highlight was a unexpected visit from Jorge Ordonez from District 4700 Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador. His son is one of our visiting Exchange Students. He reporting on the various projects that clubs in our District, including Emmett, have been supporting, including water projects, computers for schools, playground equipment, micro-credit, and school uniforms.

The District made about $1500 on dollar raffle tickets, $3500 on the on-line raffle and $41,000 on the $10 cruise raffle tickets - all to help support the costs of the convention. Interestingly, Caldwell Rotary Club sold more than half of the cruise tickets and our own Vicky Page took the prize for most tickets sold with 57. The winner? Rotarian Jason Edsel sold it to his wife!!

All in all, it was a great two days! It made us all very proud to be Rotarians!