Last week, our club made the first delivery of baking equipment and accessories to the BALAY DALANGPAN of SPED School to fulfill our commitment to provide the necessary equipment and training tools to be used in their livelihood training programs for their physically and mentally challenged students. The center was established to enable these groups of special people to acquire the necessary skills for them to earn a decent living. More deliveries of equipment will be made to cover baking, sewing, food preparation and other means of livelihood. This project is under our International Avenue of Service which have been bestowed a matching grant from The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International and the Rotary Club of Santa Rosa Sunrise, District 5130.

In observance of the New Generation month, there will be a club level competition today to choose our representative to compete in the Voice of the Youth impromptu speaking contest.  With the Rotary Club of Bagumbayan Manila as National Coordinator, the Voice of our Youth is a biennial national competition open to Filipino high school students, 14 to 18 years old, from public and private schools nationwide.  It seeks to develop the students’ ability to form their point of view on a particular topic within a limited preparation time and to effectively convey their message to an audience in plain English.  The competition aims to inspire the Filipino youth to attain world-class proficiency in English communication, in furtherance of universal understanding and cooperation. This is our modest contribution to the development of our youth today, the new generation, by guiding and molding them to become knowledgeable and better-equipped citizens of our country.

In the finals of the Dart event in the on-going inter-color sports fest, the blue team prevailed over the yellow team in the team championship. However, the individual title goes to PE Apuy of the yellow team. There will be more games to be played this week and I am encouraging our members to be there to experience the excitement and fellowship of this activity.

A meeting for our “On to Cagayan De Oro Metro Sports Fest” was held last week and it seems that our team really need the support from our members in terms of participation and financial support. The team is carrying the name of our club and the success of the team is also the success of our club. Let us be generous enough to support our team Metro Iloilo.

I would like to remind the members of the Board of Directors that there will be a board meeting tonight at 7, September 30, 2008, at Club 21, Smallville.