It was a rowdy bunch this week as President Dwight calmed the members so Mark Block could lead the club in our Pledge of Allegiance.  Art Henry provided a lovely invocation (almost seemed professional! ;)

Guests: from Delphi Greek Restaurant, owner Roozbeh Farahanipour.

Announcements:

• Chris Bradford updated the club on our Global Scholarsprogram. The Club chose an applicant and he will continue to keep us updated on the progress through District.  He thanked his committee members,  Leo Tseng, Dwight Heikkila, and  Debbie Heap  
• Save the Date for Saturday, June 29, for Dwight'sDemotion Party! Location TBA
• Jim Crane announced news about the art, music, dance, and speech contests at Uni High and emphasized having the teachers involved as key to  being  successful. Jim Crane, Pres. Dwight,  PE Mark Rogo and Phil Gabriel and his daughters  judged - thank you!
• The annual Easter Basket Delivery to UCLA Mattel Children's Hospital is coming up and Dwight asked members to volunteer to help with producing & delivering 60 baskets.  There was debate deciding Leo should pay a fine of $1/basket he delivers as the price of his Easter Bunny fame.  Leo will phone those who volunteered when he needs them - thank you members for stepping up!
• PE Mark Rogo announced in the spirit of Ignite we are going to re-launch the Hospitality Dinners via one ex Past President a month!  Some of the PP's may have not known this but you will be receiving a call and it's going to be great fun!  =)
• PP Ron Lyster has agreed to take on more responsibility with our club's social media presence with the help of a couple of Rotaractors  to have more presence on the Internet -  Thank you, Ron! 

Today's Merchant Minute, Roozbeh Farahanipour, knows Mark Rogo through the Westwood Neighborhood Council- The Greek Delphi Restaurant has been in our neighborhood at 1385 Westwood Blvd. since 1985 and our visitor today has owned since 2009. Has the greatest selection of Greek wines, they have a golden A in cleanliness grade, and are open 8:30am to 11:00pm EVERY SINGLE DAY!  They also offer catering, can host meetings, etc.

We have two new club "initiatives" coming to the friendly Westwood Village Rotary Club:

1. Bring a Guest Initiative IS coming 
2. Spirit of Rotary minute

Manya Condamoor, External Vice President of the UCLA Student Chapter, Charlotte Insull, project lead of the  Nicaragua team, and David Ly, project lead of the Guatemala team presented on behalf of the UCLA EWB.

The Guatemala project is a rainwater catchment system to improve access to water. During their  6- month dry cycle families have to travel for daily water and miss school, David showed pictures of the process building tanks, and families they helped. They shared results and this year's goals along with correcting some of their challenges and innovation with a new prototype that is more financially viable for Guatemalans. Other Accomplishments include the revised instruction manual and a couple awards.

Charlotte was lead of the Nicaragua project S.E.D., Sanitation, education, and development. A long-term project to improve sanitation and waste. They also have 6 months of rain and interruptions in education. So this project also intends to improve quality and access to potable water. She loves the hands-on experience, shared pictures of continued partnership. Showed what they ate, the same thing every single day, for every meal for 10 days! Their travel just from airport to villages takes two full days, examples of planes, boats, taxis, mules, etc. They were also building a schoolhouse in Thailand. 

EWB encompasses undergrad, grad, and Ph.D. students across all disciplines. Diversity in knowledge and skills improves quality of life for people and provides many hands-on project opportunities.
Currently there are 50-60 active members at UCLA, 7 students and one professional engineer go on each trip.

On behalf of UCLA Engineers Without Borders, Charlotte, David, and Maanya asked me "to thank Sally Brant and the rest of Westwood Village Rotary Club for hosting us on Thursday. We really enjoyed presenting at the event and meeting all the Rotarians; everyone was very friendly and had great questions about our project. We would again like to thank Westwood Rotary for your continued interest in and support of our club, and we look forward to hearing from you soon."
Marsha Hunt announced  to Save-the-Date for March 2, 2013 10:00a.m. to 2:00p.m to make WAPIs! (yes, you read that right! ;)   

-YYE Aly Shoji