Meghan Burton began the meeting at 12:30
Pledge: Ron Cassel
Inspiration: Doug Brent: He is learning Spanish for his son’s wedding.
- Free resources online to learn new languages that help people to better communicate.
- AI and ChatGPT have many large language models for people to learn new languages.
- There is a whole community of goodwill around language and learning and it connects people together.
- Go out and learn something new
Guests: Lissa Kreisler, Joanne Smith, Mike Egleston, Sally Philbrick, Marico Sayoc and Michael Santoro.
Rotarian in the Wild: Nicholas Welzenbach and his family in Goleta.
Celebrated October Birthdays and Anniversaries.
October Birthdays
Jenna Mittleman Oct. 2 Dick Konrad Oct. 24
Steve Rice Oct. 3 Myron Smith Oct. 24
Mike Norcia Oct. 4 Gregg Butterfield Oct. 25
Ed Stahl Oct. 6 Tina Orsi-Hartigan Oct. 27
Skip Brewster Oct. 11 Julian Rodriguez Oct. 29
Barbara Fishman Oct. 13 Jack Chevlen Oct. 29
Paul Yeadon Oct. 18 Mary Lonhart Oct. 31
Doug Brent Oct. 21 Charles Goss Oct. 31
October Anniversaries
Mike Norcia 21 years Dick Konrad 7 years
Andrea Lee 21 years Doug Brent 5 years
Wes Sadumiano 11 years Tom Picraux 1 year
Patti van der Berg 9 years Donna Brewster 1 year
Marty Fishman 7 years
Cassy: Marico Sayoc thanked our Rotary Club for the grant that supports the counseling and support services for LGHS and other schools in the area. Cassy hires, trains and mentors, professional therapists, they partner with schools that value mental health, tailor their programs to the specific needs of the community and make help available to all students, regardless of their ability to pay. They have 14,619 students in their programs.
Annual Rotary Foundation Drive: Marty Fishman spoke about the Foundation drive. We currently have raised $23,640 from 20 donors. Hoping that everyone in our club can donate what they are able to give. The pledge sheet went around to all of the tables, but you can also give online. Rotary International is involved in so many charitable organizations around the world and contributing to the foundation helps to support those efforts and the effort to eradicate polio.
Guest Speaker:
Kyle Santoro who was introduced by Margaret Smith. He spoke about his documentary film, Fentanyl High, which deals with the fentanyl crisis going on in our country right now. He interviewed parents and teens about the effects and devastation of fentanyl addiction. Kyle was born in Taipei where he graduated from 6th grade public school before moving to Los Gatos. He is currently a senior at LGHS. His passion for filmmaking ignited in July of 2021 when he filmed a 2-minute short about the homeless on the backstreets and alleys in San Francisco. He started his production company LC2 productions and partnered with the SCC Fire Department” Do Your Part campaign and made an eBike safety video with the LG Police Department for the town of Los Gatos.
He decided to make the documentary Fentanyl High because fentanyl is an unspoken topic, and is at the center of high school life across the country. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. In 2021, there were 6,843 opioid related deaths in California, 5,777 of these deaths were related to Fentanyl. In 2021, there were 224 fentanyl related overdoses among teen’s ages 15-19 in California. Fentanyl fatalities in SCC went from 11 in 2018 to 27 in 2019, 88 in 2020 and 131 in 2021.
The first screening of his documentary was in May of 2023 at the Los Gatos High School Theater to a sold-out audience. The movie’s goal is to reach as many teenagers and parents and community members as possible to raise awareness of this devastating issue. Kyle also has a fentanyl high study guide as part of the documentary. The film will be showing at the Los Gatos Theater on December 6. Donations were taken from those Rotarians who wanted to contribute to help finance the project. If you weren’t able to attend the meeting, but would like to donate to help fund the final cut of the film, please contact Treasurer Patti at (408) 248-1497. We raised $2,550 at the meeting Tuesday. Thank you.
There was a quick raffle at the end of the meeting and Meghan adjourned the meeting at 1:30pm.