Making a difference one tree at a time
This spring has found The Panda out and about doing all sorts of things. Several events happened with Big Brothers Big Sisters and The St Thomas Railway City Rotary Club of the past 60 days that has helped make a difference in our community. It is absolutely amazing knowing that the little things we are doing is making a small difference.
April started with the end of the Inn-Out-of-the-Cold program for 2015.2016, our Rotary Club served up a ton of meals and a ton of dishes were washed (and rewashed).
Next we were up in Sarnia at Rotary Training for our Rotary District. The Panda is really looking forward to being President of our Club in 2017-2018. We will be putting a huge focus on kids and will hopefully be able to get a new Interact Club up and running , sending out our first exchange student and hopefully receiving our first exchange student from abroad. The training really gets you thinking about how to the message out to the local and international community. Rotary really helps bring the message the “Rotary is here, something good is going to happen.”
Big Brothers Big Sisters of St Thomas Elgin was out serving up hotdogs and sausages at Canadales (an amazing place to get your green thumb – green!). We served up a ton of great food and made some money to help support all the great programs that help mentor great kids right here in our community. Rotary will be out in July to do the same BBQ! Later this summer Big Brothers Big Sisters will be holding their annual golf tournament and the 2nd Annual Big Ball Drop. The Smart Panda is honoured to be the title sponsor for these events, and The Panda Team is looking forward to getting the golf clubs out to test our skills on the links! If you are in the area and want to golf – register here! If you would like to find out more about the big ball drop – click here! Interestingly enough myFM which is the local radio station is a title sponsor for Big Brothers Big Sisters and we had to record the commercials for the Golf & Ball Drop, and it turns out that The Panda has a radio voice – who knew. Maybe that means some podcasts will be in our future.
May started off with Rotary serving up a huge all you could eat Perch dinner to over 300 people. The Club was able to raise almost $5,000 which will be used to support many great local programs in the upcoming year. Speaking of great programs, earlier this year we had Kettle Creek Conservation Authority come in and speak to The Club and we were able to use $500.00 most of which was given to use from the Rotary Club of London West when they closed last year and we combined that with a 50% matching district grant of $250.00 allowing us to give $750.00 to purchase trees which we planted in a local park right here in St Thomas (actually the park around the corner from The Panda Headquarters). Sixty beautiful trees were planted in the park all of which go towards the count of the Million Tree Challenge. It was a nice way to segway into The Club’s second birthday last week.
June will find us out getting ready for The Ride to End MS where we will bike 100 miles from Grand Bend to London (and back). We are looking to try to exceed $1000.00 this year, you can donate here!
Until Next Month……
