Our Friday, April 10, online meeting will include a brief greeting from our former Rotary Youth Exchange student, Shonita Joshi.  Shonita came to us from Pune, India in August of 2006 and graduated from Homestead with the class of 2007. 

Her first two host families were Sunrise members Bob/Jan Blazich and Karl/Sue Ekman.  Shonita's third host was the Bruce Rowe family from the Noon Club. 

Shonita will briefly share some memories from her time in Mequon-Thiensville and talk about her life since finishing her year with us.

Thanks to ZOOM, we are hoping to have a different RYE student visit us each week.

Bob Blazich

Editors Note: In this 24/7 environment of COVID-19 news, I thought I'd share an article now-and-then highlighting ordinary people reaching out to help others. Enjoy.

By Michael Hollan

A pizza place in New York City has dedicated itself to feeding health care and hospital workers who are struggling to keep up with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Now the restaurant's landlord is joining in to make sure that the food keeps coming out of the kitchen and into the hospitals.

Sauce Pizzeria owner, Adam Elzer, says his restaurant is making 400 pizzas per day and sending them all to the city's hospitals, NBC New York reports. He told the news outlet that he wanted to make sure that the workers were still able to get something to eat while dealing with the outbreak.

"They’re running around from room to room, the hospitals are packed, and if we’re not sending food, a lot of them are not eating," Elzer told NBC New York. "Basically anywhere that we get a note from a nurse or a doctor telling us that they’re in need, we figure out a way to get them on the schedule and then we deliver to that hospital."

Sauce Pizzeria has reportedly delivered pizzas to over 40 different hospitals across the city's five boroughs, all for free.

Ben Kraus of A&E Real Estate Management, Sauce's landlord, found out about the donations and decided to help out. The real estate company donated $20,000 to the pizzeria and froze rent payments for the next three months.

"It made it a lot easier for us to keep doing what we’re doing and to feel really good about that," Elzer said. “Pizza makes people happy. That’s what this started from, that we wanted to give them some reason to smile when it’s kinda hard to smile with what they’re currently doing."

"I saw what Adam was doing on social media honestly and when we noticed what he was doing it was very clear that we needed to help him," Krause told the outlet. "We set up Adam with logistics to be able to deliver en mass to hospitals all over New York City."