Credit: © Rotary International

Chris Orsinger, executive director of Friends of Buford Park and Mount Pisgah will be speaking at tomorrow’s Eugene Airport Rotary meeting.

About section from www.bufordpark.org :

Friends of Buford Park & Mt. Pisgah is the only organization with
the mission and expertise to conserve the Mt. Pisgah area’s incredible
botanical, wildlife and recreational values.

Friends of Buford Park & Mt. Pisgah mobilizes funding, expertise
and volunteer resources to conserve and enhance the botanical, fish,
wildlife and recreational values on Buford Park and other nearby public
lands. Since 2000, FBP has raised and invested over $1.8 million in
habitat and trail projects, plus volunteer contributions valued at
$500,000 annually. We restore floodplain, wetland, and upland forest
and prairie habitats; operate a native plant nursery; advocates for
park land acquisition; assist Lane County with trail planning and
construction; and educate park visitors and the public about important
wildlife, botanical and recreational assets of the Mt. Pisgah area. In
partnership with The Nature Conservancy, we are leading efforts to
acquire an outstanding, adjacent 1200-acre parcel with six miles of
river frontage.

Friends of Buford Park & Mt. Pisgah has a successful track
record of implementing large, regionally significant habitat projects
on and near Buford Park. For example, we:

1) propagate over 80 native species in our native plant nursery,
2) restored flows to floodplain side channels that had been blocked by
human obstructions, such as road fill and an Army Corps of Engineers
levee;
3) created seasonal backwater habitat to benefit salmonids and other aquatic species;
4) planted 70 floodplain acres with native trees, shrubs, grasses and wildflowers; and
5) facilitated prescribed burns and native seeding on 30 acres of prairie and oak savanna

Come here Chris speak more about the Friends of Bufrord Park and Mount Pisgah tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m. at Wings.

Assistant Professor Gabriela Martinez and Professor Lynn Stephen

Lane County has quite a rich history that many residents are unaware of. More specifically, Lane County’s racial and ethnic past. Lane County has not always been the home to European settlers, other ethnic groups made Lane County their homes far before that.

To help celebrate Oregon’s 150th birthday, Assistant Professor Gabriela Martinez and Professor Lynn Stephen of the UO’s anthropology department partnered with the Lane County Historical Museum to create an exhibit and documentary featuring the underrepresented Latino population of Lane County.

Lane County Historical Society & Museum will feature and exhibit highlighting different racial and ethnic groups that have constituted Lane County since before European contact and continuing to present day.

This is the largest exhibit in the museum’s Sesquicentennial celebration, it includes collected testimonials from various ethnic peoples and tells the stories of Latino roots, Native American termination and the Ping Yang School Bombing (a mysterious domestic terrorism act that remains unsolved), among others.

“It was really a community organized event founded by collective efforts,” Martinez says of the project, which combines her passion for filmmaking with her expertise on Latin America studies. She worked with grassroots organizers from local organizations FACETA and CAUSA who helped finding people in the community wiling to share their stories.

This is a great opportunity to learn more about the county we live in and get the correct information. The exhibit will be at the Lane County Historical Society & Museum until December 31, 2009.

Times: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
www.lanecountyhistoricalsociety.org

Location: Lane County Historical Society/ 740 W 13th Ave; Eugene

Phone: (541) 682-4242

Admission: $3, $2 seniors

[Information from http://www.traveloregon.com and http://jcomm.uoregon.edu/articles/]

Together with SHARE, Rotarians, and village volunteers work together to build a retaining wall that keep the wells from going dry. so they yeild all year. The Rotary club of Bombay Metro and Rotary Club of Palo Alto, California, USA, used an RI Matching Grant to help facilitate the project.

Rotary Images/Alyce Henson

After receiving close to a half  million dollars from family friends and Oregon-based Angel Investors for her start-up Web site, Caroline Cummings has learned the importance of extra help and being an entrepreneur.
Cummings has plenty of experience in the realm of entrepreneurship. She is the co-founder of Smart-ups, an entrepreneurial support group in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, which is a local chapter of the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) based in Portland, OR.

Now Cummings is giving back even more by assisting with the Willamette Angel Conference, an investors conference connecting early stage and seed businesses with Angel and venture investors.

Cummings will be speaking at the Eugene Airport Rotary 7:30 a.m. at Wings. Find out more about Caroline Cummings on Twitter or on her blog

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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a $255 million challenge grant to Rotary International in the global effort to eradicate polio, bringing the total committed by Rotary and the Gates Foundation to $555 million. The donation will go toward the four countries where the polio-virus is endemic: India, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.

“Rotarians, government leaders, and health professionals have made a phenomenal commitment to get us to a point at which polio afflicts only a small number of the world’s children,” Gates said. “However, complete elimination of the poliovirus is difficult and will continue to be difficult for a number of years. Rotary in particular has inspired my own personal commitment to get deeply involved in achieving eradication.”

In response to the new $255 million Gates Foundation grant, Rotary will raise $100 million in matching funds. In November 2007, RI received a $100 million Gates Foundation grant, which Rotary committed to match by raising $100 million. Rotary has raised nearly $73 million toward this amount: $62 million in contributions and $11 million in commitments. Each club is being challenged to organize a public fundraiser annually for the next three years.

Polio eradication has been Rotary’s top priority since 1985, with more than $1.2 billion contributed to the effort. Gates praised Rotary for providing the volunteers, advocates, and donors who have helped bring about a 99 percent decline in the number of polio cases. This grant shows that the Gates Foundation is just as committed as Rotary to ridding the world of this disease.

For more information, please visit www.rotaryinternational.org/endpolio

[excerpted from article on www.rotaryinternational.org]

LEAD—Leadership Education Adventure Direction—was established in 1998 as a component of the City of Eugene Outdoor Program. In July 2001, LEAD became an independent nonprofit agency offering a comprehensive leadership development program serving low-income teens ages 12 – 17 in Lane County.

A lot of work goes into organizing this program with Heather Brule as the LEADership group program director, the program is like butter. Heather has facilitated groups of teens and adults in rock climbing, rafting and other outdoor adventure activities for various organizations during the last five years.

She joined LEAD as a volunteer in 2003 and has been part of the staff since 2005. While at LEAD, she has helped develop the structure of the LEADership groups, train and supervise volunteers, and support teens in their development as community leaders in the program. She completed a B.S in Psychology from the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon.

Heather will be speaking at the Eugene Airport’s Rotary meeting tomorrow morning (February 26) at 7:30 a.m. at the Eugene Airport. See you there!

Clubs around the world are doing an extra special something to celebrate this momentous day. District 7720 (North Carolina, USA) has big plans for celebrating Rotary’s anniversary, 23 February, this year. All 45 clubs in the district have committed to carrying out a service project, ranging from reading in schools to improving home accessibility for residents with disabilities.

You can do something to celebrate Rotary, too. Here are 5 things off of a list of 100 suggestions:

1. Create a giant birthday cake in the shape of a Rotary wheel, indicating how many years Rotary has been an organization and invite the community/media to share it.

2. Work with your local Chamber of Commerce to declare a Rotary Day in your town. Publicize a proclamation in schools, newspapers, TV, businesses and Web sites.

3. Utilize Rotary’s newspaper supplement on Humanity in Motion III, IV, and V highlighting local and international Rotary stories. Localize the piece by profiling exchange students, local projects and those who have benefited from Rotary service. Create a list of club members and their occupations in the community.

4. Conduct a billboard campaign highlighting Rotary’s continued service locally and globally to show the good Rotary has accomplished.

5. Create a Rotary Day podcast with a panel of Rotarians discussing service projects. Send it to your local media.