Rescue Me Tucson seeks to facilitate adoptions of dogs and cats from local and rural animal shelters with the "purrfect" individuals and families hoping to add four-legged friends to the family.
Marana Rotary Club
October 11, 2022 weekly meeting
Laura called the meeting to order at 7 a.m.. The first 10 minutes were dedicated to social catch-up.
Announcements
Laura thanked Denise for the tasty pastries. She then noted some upcoming events:
- Oct 15, Heritage Park, Fall Festival, Laura hopes to have a Marana Rotary Club presence in the future.
- Oct 15, Saturday, Tucson Classic Car Show, benefiting Pima JTED.
- Oct 24, World Polio Day, we will discuss more at next week’s meeting
We discussed the commitment the club will have to make for Rotary Youth Exchange. We are still looking for ways to sponsor Avery as an outbound student. We need to work out some sponsorship issues as the application process continues. The actual cost for sponsorship is $3,350, and we need three host families, who can be Rotarians or non-Rotarians. Cathy will reach out to Mountain View High School to inform them that we have interest in hosting an in-bound student. Marana High School also has two spaces for inbound students. Cindy Dooling described the many moving parts to this process. Laura wants the message sent that we are interested and maybe we will need to partner with Dove Mountain.
Happy Bucks:
- Harold introduced his guest, Mike, a fellow pilot who built his own airplane.
- Denise commented that the El Tour de Tucson was on-track and that our aid station #8 will be located at Helmut Peak Road. Denise also was happy to have attended the very successful Reid Park Zoo fund raising event.
- Cathy was happily contributing to Happy Bucks today.
- Cindy was happy for their awesome vacation in Hawaii where it was much warmer than expected.
- John was “just happy”.
- Don was happy to have been visiting the Yuma Rotary clubs for three days where he attended three meetings and observed some different club cultures.
- Mary was happy for the cooler weather.
- Carol was looking forward to some time in Pinetop.
- Beckie was looking forward to our guest speaker.
- Andrea was happy for the cooler weather in Marana.
- Laura was looking forward to the next 6 days after which her life will be easier when her teaching stint ends with final grades.
Guest Speaker
Laura introduced Nancy Young Wright, board president of the Rescue Me Tucson animal adoption program. Nancy provided a comprehensive overview of her organization’s efforts to facilitate animal adoptions.
Nancy, a two-term Arizona state legislature, described the efforts and laws which challenge the Arizona adoption landscape. Rescue Me attempts to fill the gap between animal shelters such as Pima Animal Care and families who are seeking to find homes for their cats and dogs, and those seeking to adopt. Nancy explained the issues of "puppy mills" and the laws that impede their regulation in Arizona. Rescue Me’s location in the Premium Outlet Mall, Marana, relies heavily on volunteers and donations. Nancy’s presentation was eye opening and illustrated the challenges, especially in rural areas and native American communities, within Arizona.
We ended the meeting with the Four-Way Test.