Stories
Meetings Cancelled

In light of recent Coronavirus news and in keeping the health and safety of our members, their families, program speakers and others in mind, MT Sunrise Rotary club meetings have been cancelled through March.

Club leadership will monitor the situation going forward and update members on a weekly basis.

Please be safe.

 

Dave Schlageter
Club President

Club Meeting Information

In light of recent Coronavirus news and in keeping the health and safety of our members, their families, program speakers and others in mind, MT Sunrise Rotary club meetings have been cancelled through March. Club leadership will monitor the situation going forward and update members on a weekly basis.

The greeter will provide either the thought, a Rotary minute, share a family moment or a cultural tradition ... anything they would like to start off the day positive.

Upcoming "It's your Rotary moment" assignees:

  • Danila Danesi (TBD)
  • Seth Duhnke (TBD)
  • Bobby Fisher (TBD)
  • Lucia Francis (TBD)

Note: If you are unable to act as "It's your Rotary moment" assignee when scheduled please arrange for your replacement.

Visit our website at mtsunriserotary.org.

Local group Hope Without Borders preps for latest volunteer trip amid coronavirus concerns

Editors Note: Our own Lance Parve and his wife Julie are featured in this WTMJ4 story on Hope Without Borders.

A local husband and wife who've devoted much of their lives to volunteer work overseas are gearing up for yet another trip to assist people living in severe poverty in the African country of Kenya.

Lance Parve, a Wisconsin DOT engineer, and Julie Parve, a nurse practitioner, started Hope Without Borders in 2007.

"We founded Hope Without Borders to do humanitarian, charitable, nonprofit work as volunteers," Lance Parve said.

The organization has put together roughly 30 trips to countries in Africa, Central America, and South America since its creation.

Lance and Julie Parve fundraise and apply for grants to fund their work and projects, but they don't ever get paid with the money raised, and neither do the volunteers they recruit.

In May, they'll take a group of 15 such volunteers, who all paid for their own airfare, to Kenya.

The group is monitoring the global COVID-19 pandemic, but currently still plans to make the trip. Hope Without Borders previously traveled to Africa during an ebola outbreak.

"It always amazes me how people are willing to give up their vacation time, and open up their wallets," Julie Parve said.

"Though the years we've probably raised, with people volunteering, and with money, over $3 million," Lance Parve added.

The trip to Kenya in May includes many volunteers who are students in nursing, or nurse practitioner students. The group will begin their volunteer work by assisting with poverty relief in the Nairobi slums.

"These slums are in conditions you can't even imagine," Lance Parve said. "There's human waste everywhere. There aren't enough toilets for million-person slums."

"The people there, maybe they only eat one meal a day," he added.

One of the biggest challenges the impoverished locals face: A lack of clean drinking water.

Thought of the Week

Instead of getting married again, I’m going to find a woman I don’t like and just give her a house. - Rod Stewart

Flattening A Pandemic's Curve: Why Staying Home Now Can Save Lives

Source: CDC, Drew Harris
Credit: Connie Hanzhang Jin/NPR

As the coronavirus continues to spread in the U.S., more and more businesses are sending employees off to work from home. Public schools are closing, universities are holding classes online, major events are getting canceled, and cultural institutions are shutting their doors. Even Disney World and Disneyland are set to close. The disruption of daily life for many Americans is real and significant — but so are the potential life-saving benefits.

It's all part of an effort to do what epidemiologists call flattening the curve of the pandemic. The idea is to increase social distancing in order to slow the spread of the virus, so that you don't get a huge spike in the number of people getting sick all at once. If that were to happen, there wouldn't be enough hospital beds or mechanical ventilators for everyone who needs them, and the U.S. hospital system would be overwhelmed. That's already happening in Italy.

"If you think of our health care system as a subway car and it's rush hour and everybody wants to get on the car once, they start piling up at the door," says Drew Harris, a population health researcher at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. "They pile up on the platform. There's just not enough room in the car to take care of everybody, to accommodate everybody. That's the system that is overwhelmed. It just can't handle it, and people wind up not getting services that they need."

Harris is the creator of a widely shared graphic visualizing just why it is so important to flatten the curve of a pandemic, including the current one — we've reproduced his graphic at the top of this page. The tan curve represents a scenario in which the U.S. hospital system becomes inundated with coronavirus patients.

However, Harris says, if we can delay the spread of the virus so that new cases aren't popping up all at once, but rather over the course of weeks or months, "then the system can adjust and accommodate all the people who are possibly going to get sick and possibly need hospital care." People would still get infected, he notes, but at a rate that the health care system could actually keep up with — a scenario represented by the more gently sloped blue curve on the graph.

A Rotary LOL Moment

Dilbert Classics by Scott Adams

What's It Like To: Scrub in on the world’s first heart transplant

Editor's Note: This is the fifth annual appearance of What It’s Like, a proven favorite with readers inside and outside Rotary. - The Rotarian

Dean Rohrs - Rotary Club of Langley Central, British Columbia; past RI vice president

In December 1967, I was completing my nurse’s training at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. At that time, Christiaan Barnard was leading a team that hoped to perform the first successful human heart transplant at that hospital. There was a race between teams, because it was such a huge medical achievement. I was on “backup rotation” one night when I was called into the OR. It was just a coincidence that I happened to be on duty.

You have to understand, with a surgery like that, the room is crowded with people: the surgeons, their assistants, the anesthetists, the folks operating the heart-lung machine that keeps the patient alive. My job was just to do whatever needed to be done. I counted the cotton swabs used during the surgery, to make sure none were left in the patient. I fetched water. The surgeons would lean toward me and say, “Please mop my brow,” because they were perspiring.

In the moment, you understand that you’re doing something most unusual, but you’re so involved with the process that you’re just making sure you’re watching and filling in wherever you can. I knew the man receiving the heart and his family; he had been on the ward for a long time and he was clearly dying. He would have been gone in 24 or 48 hours. And here was this young woman who had been in a car accident and donated her heart.

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Apr 03, 2020
Ozaukee Washington Land Trust's Partnership with MT Sunrise Rotary
Ozaukee Washington Land Trust's Partnership with MT Sunrise Rotary

Ryan graduated from UW-Stevens Point with a degree in Wildlife Ecology and Management. Later, he earned a graduate degree with honors in Environmental Policy and Management, with a fish and wildlife management emphasis.

Fresh out of college, Ryan gained employment with the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society as a Chronic Wasting Disease Biologist. Ryan trained tribal members and took CWD samples throughout the eastern US. As a native to southeastern Wisconsin, Ryan returned home after spending several years in the state of Washington. There, he worked for the Washington State DNR as a Fish and Wildlife Biologist. He oversaw timber harvest activities on public lands and was able to gain skills with scientific research design, endangered species processes, habitat conservation and land management plans, habitat inventory and analysis, geographic information systems, forest health, and landscape level management regimes.

Ryan joined the OWLT team in early 2016. He manages 32 preserves, over 2000 acres, up to 8 staff, and one Mequon Park Woodlot! Ryan’s skills that get put to work each day include ecosystem assessment and restoration, mechanics, carpentry, felling timber, and facility and grounds maintenance.

Apr 10, 2020
Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District
Apr 24, 2020
Milwaukee Community Sailing Center
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