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Books can be donated throughout the year 24/7 at the Blue Bin located near the Rotary Fieldhouse located south of the Eagles Hockey Arena near trhe soccer fields.

Click here to get the location map.

Welcome to our Club!

Service Above Self

We meet Tuesdays at 12:00 PM
Rotary Fieldhouse

14600 20th Avenue
Surrey, BC
Canada

Email:

president@whiterockrotary.org

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SASSY Awards 2018

Posted by Raj Rajagopal

The eighth annual Service Above Self Surrey Youth Awards were presented on May 17, 2018 to celebrate the achievements of youth aged 15 to 21 who are making a difference in our community by demonstrating the Rotary ideal of Service above Self.

The awards were given in the categories of

Community Service, Environmental Leadership, Overcoming Adversity, Sports Leadership, Art & Culture Leadership and Youth Leadership.

The Community Service Award was sponsored by the Rotary Club of White Rock and was presented to Cindy Zeng by our Club Vice President Nirmal Takhar.

Make a donation to the White Rock Rotary Club

British Virgin Islands - Cane Garden Bay School project

We've partnered with the Tortola Rotary Club in the British Virgin Islands and their affiliates in White Rock/South Surrey to ensure that the funds raised will go DIRECTLY to the causes we want to assist, with no handling fees. We have earmarked the school in Cane Garden Bay as the recipients of the benefit. It is a very important facility for the community and their rebuilding will greatly aid the regeneration for young & old alike.

"The following is a first hand account from a member of the Rotary Club of Tortola, BVI:

The British Virgin Islands (BVI) received a devastating, direct hit from Irma on Sept. 6th. A category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 185-190 mph and gusts over 220 churned thru the islands for 5 long hours, tornadoes embedded inside, blowing apart almost everything in her path. 90% of the buildings on the island were destroyed beyond repair or severely damaged, the entire island was left without water or power (it is estimated power will not be fully restored for 4 more months) and the communication infrastructure was almost completely wiped out. Most of the trees were uprooted or broken and the main island roads were impassable for a week, and longer in the outlying areas. Thousands have been left homeless with literally only the clothes on their backs, businesses are destroyed, and jobs are scarce. It's not a pretty picture. I've been on the island after several category 3 & 4 hurricanes but nothing comes close to this - the scenes that l've witnessed are reminiscent of war-torn, bombed-out Syria. It's heartbreaking."

Food-card program raises $64,000 for South Surrey food bank

Aaron Hinks photo Sources’ South Surrey food bank volunteer Norm Chess unloads food donations at the food bank Tuesday morning. A food-card program has raised more than $64,000 for the organization.

SaveOn Foods - Sources Food Bank cheque presentation

Posted on Jul 29, 2017

Darrell Jones of SaveOn Foods attended the Semiahmoo Rotary Club to present a cheque and talk about the Rotary-Sources Food Bank food card program. The program was sponsored by SaveOn Foods as well as the Block Family during the 2016-2017 Rotary year resulting in a 16% donation. Total sales of food gift cards was $424,800 resulting in a total donation to Sources Food Bank of $67,900. Those funds are further leveraged by the Food Bank to achieve a significantly larger benefit.

For the 2017-2018 Rotary club year, all five of the White Rock & South Surrey areas have agreed to co-sponsor the program with SaveOn Foods. Based on sponsorship currently secured, a donation of 17% of every food card purchased through the program will be made to Sources Food Bank.

President Raj at Rotary Club of Chisinau, Moldova

President Raj is in Moldova on a World Bank assignment. During his stay at Chisinau, he attended the meeting of the Rotary Cosmo Club of Chisinau. Here is a photo of President Raj with the President of the Chisinau Club with a couple of other members of that club.

ITALIAN SOCIAL EVENING

Posted on Oct 23, 2016

The Social Committee held an Italian evening, hosted by Jack and Betty Rae on October 22, 2016. Click on the following link to view a video, shot and edited by Rotarian Ian Lagasse, of the evening. . https://animoto.com/play/teTaYgwNFX1BmPatNhDWiw?autostart=1

Dr. Marco Merra Updates on Genomes

Thanks to Jack and his program committee for today's excellent speaker, Dr. Marco Merra, who is head of the genome sciences department at the BC Cancer Agency's research centre at UBC. Funding from the annual Terry Fox run helps support this research. In introducing Dr Merra, Van covered a portion of his resume outlining some of his many accomplishments and awards.

Hospice - Peace Arch Hospital

Last weeks speaker was Beth Kish. She is Executive Director of White Rock Hospice Society. Her husband was raised in White Rock -his father a teacher at Semiahmoo High School- Frank Kish.

Beth fundraised to build hospice in rural Alberta and eventually became the Executive Director of that hospice. Her husband’s work took him back to White Rock and the timing was good as White Rock Hospice was looking for an Executive Director.

Beth explained that there are currently 7 hospice beds in Peace Arch Hospital. Any patient expected to dies in 6 month or less and can't manage at home is eligible for one of those 7 beds. The beds are managed by the hospital staff but any counseling and comfort company are provided by the volunteers who are members of the White Rock Hospice Society. Patients are made as comfortable as possible and any pain is managed. Counselling will continue at the support and care centre on Russell Street across from PA Hospital.

The Ministry of Health has approved building a separate Hospice Building on the Peace Arch hospital grounds at the corner of 16A and 156th. It will be a 15 bed hospice costing 2.1 million for the building. White Rock Hospice Society will lease it back to Fraser Health for a nominal annual rent on the condition that Fraser Health operates the hospice and covers the operating costs. Currently about one million dollars has been raised for the building costs and another 1.1 million is needed to complete the capital campaign. Counseling will continue at the support centre owned by Hospice on Russell Street across from south side of Peace Arch Hospital.

The cost of providing counseling services comes from a thrift store on 24th Ave (near Black Bond Book Store), from public donations and from grants. Beth noted that many of their Hospice volunteers also help with our Rotary book sales.

District 5050 Golf Tournament

The District 5050 golf tournament was held this Friday Aug. 12th with all funds raised going to the Rotary Foundation for doing good in this world. It was held at Hazelmere golf course in South Surrey and we had 8 members of our club ( sorry 6 and 2 spouses ) that were players and our member Ted Church won a blender. Great fun was had by all!

Rotary Networking Plus

Denis Boyd, our past District Governor, spoke about a new initiative to return (to some degree at least) to the roots of Rotary. We have seen a shift from a very strong emphasis on business networking (in the early days of Rotary), to a shift away from business networking- to the point where some clubs have fined members for talking business at a meeting! The new theme is “Rotary is open for business”.

To help members who want to identify and connect with businesses that are run by Rotarians, a new web site – www.rotarynetworkingplus.com – has been established, with seed funding from District 5050. The underlying theme is that doing business with Rotarians should mean doing business with business people who are ethical and can be trusted. Denis gave a demonstration of the web site, which is up and running now. There is no charge for registering a business on the website. There are now 152 listings – target is 400-500. While District 5050 has provided funding so far (about $6000 to date), the long term plan is for the website to be self – financing.

Denis’ presentation was well received – those present expressed generally positive reactions to the initiative.

Dr. Har Prashad, consulting for Tribology

Dr. Har Prashad, a very accomplished man currently consulting for Tribology. Voss is doss? Tribology is the study of science and engineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion. His topic for us was life, love, health and happiness. He broke each word down and provided us insight into how these very personal words impact our daily lives.

Community Scholarship

Megan Mohan, Semiahmoo High graduate with our $2,000 Community scholarship. Megan will be studying to become a teacher at the University of Victoria. On graduation she plans to work with children competing in the special Olympics. In a brief talk she listed some of her many volunteer accomplishments while in school.