College Scholarships, Sally King, Chair

Each year we give a $1,000 scholarship to one student from each high school in our area; Berea, Olmsted Falls and Polaris Vocational Career Center. The Club awards up to $12,000 per year.

Vocational Service Programs, Jack Kafer, Chair (440-234-8535)

Vocational Service focuses on:

• The contribution of Rotarians' vocational and professional talents to the problems and needs of society.
• Rotarians recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations.
• Rotarians adherence to and the promotion of the highest ethical standards in all occupations, including fair treatment of employers, employees, -associates, competitors and the public.

How do Berea Rotary Club's programs focus on these principles of vocational service?

1. The contribution of Rotarians' vocational and professional talents to the problems and needs of society.
   
   Berea Rotary Club's mentoring program at Polaris Career Center is chaired by Rotary member Edward Montgomery (216-898-5000). Scott Rader, Associate Principal of the Industrial and Engineering Systems Team at Polaris serves as the student mentoring program liaison (440-8917690). The goal of this partnership is for Rotary to provide positive workplace role models for students enrolled in career-technical education. Polaris juniors from Berea, Midpark, Strongsville, North Olmsted, Olmsted Falls, Fairview Park and Brooklyn High Schools team with Rotary members with similar career and outside work and school recreational and hobby interests. Ideally, the mentoring relationship continues throughout the student's senior year with contacts continuing after graduation. Rotary members and students are encouraged to maintain contact approximately every two weeks, by phone, e-mail or personal get-togethers. Activities can range from touring/shadowing at the mentor's place of employment, touring other work places arranged by the mentor, having lunch at Polaris or off campus, attending trade shows, appropriate Rotary meetings, athletic events, and the list goes on.
   
   National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) High School Financial Planning Program, consisting of six units, is taught to business classes at Berea and Midpark High Schools. According to Robert D. Manning, author of the book "Credit Card Nation", studies show that three out of five college students with a credit card maxed it out in their freshman year. In 2001, the last year for which complete statistics are available, 1.3 million Americans filed for bankruptcy. Of those, 71,500, or 5.5 percent, were twenty-four years old or younger. Rotarians with professional skills and education teach six units to Berea High and Midpark High business students:
   
   Unit 1: Financial Planning: Your Roadmap. Unit 2: Career: Labor You Love. Unit 3: Budget: Don't Go Broke. Unit 4: Savings and Investments. Unit 5: Credit: Buy Now Pay Later. Unit 6: Insurance Your Protection.
   
   Program Coordinator: Jack Kafer (440-234-8535).
   
   Berea City School District's Business Advisory Council. This is an organization made up of business people, teachers, students and administrators working in partnership for the benefit of both students and business. The Vocational Services Committee Chairman services on this council and also participates in the Council's annual mock interview program for Berea High School and Midpark High School students.
   
   
   
2. Rotarians recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations.
   
   Employee Courtesy Awards Program. Co-Chairmen: Jack Kafer (440-234-8535) and Dale Lange (440-234-7460).
   
   One employee from the public sector and one employee from the private sector are publicly recognized for exemplifying a positive and courteous attitude in their relationship with the public. Berea rotary Club and the Sun Newspapers partner to honor these two people at a banquet in November where each receives a trophy and a $500.00 Series EE U.S. Patriot Bond. Their employers are also invited and receive a plaque that can be displayed in the employee's workplace.
   View biography of previous recipients.
   
   
3. Rotarians adherence to and promotion of the highest ethical standards in all occupations, including fair treatment of employers, employees, associates, competitors and the public.
   
   The 4-way test of the things we think or do:
   
   1. Is it the TRUTH?
   2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?
   3. Will it build GOODWILL and better FRIENDSHIPS?
   4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
   
   Conceived in 1932 by Herbert J. Taylor, Rotary Club of Chicago and President of Rotary International in 1954-55. Taylor had been assigned the task of saving a company from bankruptcy and he had developed the test as a way to monitor his own actions in trying to revive the company. Officially adopted in 1943 by the Rotary International Board of Directors as an official component of the Vocational Service ideal.
   
   Chairman of 4-way speech contest: Judge Mark A. Comstock (440-826-5856).
   

Community Service Programs

• Berea Safety Town: (in cooperation with Berea Recreation Dept.)
  The club is helping to champion the reestablishment of Safety Town in Berea. A dozen pedal cars were purchased by the club. Other organizations and the police department also support this project.
• The DARE drug education program
• Berea Arts Fest
• Earth Day programs
• Church Street Ministries
• Thanksgiving meal program
• Adopt-a-Family

International Exchange, Ken Weber Chair

Rotary sponsors foreign exchange programs for high school and graduate students and business people. Our graduate level study program is the largest private scholarship plan in the U.S. (with $650 million donated, it is ten times larger than the Fulbright Program). The Group Study Program sends adults from our district around the world for visits of 4 to 6 weeks. Berea Club sponsors outbound students and hosts inbound students annually.

Polio Plus

With an original goal of $250 million the Polio Plus Fund has now exceeded $400 million, and has played a key role in eradicating polio throughout the world, a task that the World Health Organization declined due to the scope and difficulty. The Berea Club individual members donated over $6000 in 2003.

From the Wall Street Journal 5/12/05
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Polio and Rotary
April 12, 2005
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Salk polio vaccine. Poliomyelitis, also know as infantile paralysis, used to be one of childhood's most feared diseases. A few years after Dr. Jonas Salk announced his vaccine on April 12, 1955, nearly every child in the U.S. was protected. Today polio has disappeared from the Americas, Europe and the Western Pacific and is nearly gone from the rest of the world.
A too-little known part of this feat is the role played by Rotary, the international businessman's club, which 20 years ago adopted the goal of wiping out the disease. Rotary understood that medical breakthroughs are worthless unless people aren't afraid to immunize their children and efficient delivery systems exist to get the vaccine to them. And so it mobilized its members in 30,100 clubs in 166 countries to make it happen.
In 1985, when Rotary launched its eradication program, there were an estimated 350,000 new cases of polio in 125 countries. Last year, 1,263 cases were reported. More than one million Rotary members have volunteered their time or donated money to immunize two billion children in 122 countries. In 1988, Rotary money and its example were the catalyst for a global eradication drive joined by the World Health Organization, Unicef and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. In 2000 Rotary teamed up with the United Nations Foundation to raise $100 million in private money for the program. By the time the world is certified as polio-free -- probably in 2008 -- Rotary will have contributed $600 million to its eradication effort.
An economist of our acquaintance calls Rotary's effort the most successful private health-care initiative ever. A vaccine-company CEO recently volunteered to us that the work of Rotary and the Gates Foundation, both private groups, has been more effective than any government in promoting vaccines to save lives. It's become fashionable in some quarters to deride civic volunteerism, but Rotary's unsung polio effort deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.