The Rotary Club of Minden has elected Luke Poore as president for the 2024/2025 fiscal year.  Poore has been a member of Minden’s Rotary club since 2016 when he and his family moved to Minden and he began his position serving as the CEO for Kearney County Health Services.

As the club approaches its 100^th anniversary, Poore sees 2024 and 2025 as pivotal years.  “We are a service club first,” said Poore.  “The club was impacted by the limitations imposed by the COVID pandemic.  Unfortunately, we lost a few members during that time.  But in the past few months we have gained four new members and momentum is picking up. I see us as an important cornerstone in our community.”

Rotary was founded by Paul Harris in 1905 as a fellowship organization – a place where business people of diverse backgrounds could establish associations and, perhaps more importantly, lifelong friendships.  Today Rotary is an inclusive global network with over 1.2 million members in more than 35,000 clubs who unite across the globe to create lasting change.  Areas of focus include promoting peace, supporting education, protecting the environment and growing local economies

Rotary is a true testament about how ordinary citizens can positively and substantially impact the world.  In 1979 Rotary began its campaign to eradicate polio from the planet by pledging to immunize 6 million children in the Philippines.  By 2020 Rotary was responsible for successfully immunizing more than 2.5 billion children, thus reducing polio cases worldwide by 99.9%.  Rotarians have contributed more than $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to fight this debilitating disease.

Rotary Club of Minden president, Marse McCann-Carpenter noted,” Last year the club had a booth at a high school football game to raise money to fight polio.  One of the young students told us he’d never heard of polio.  How wonderful is that?  Thank you, Rotary!”

Bennett Johnson recently joined the Rotary Club of Minden after transferring from a Rotary club in Oregon.  “I’ve been in Rotary for more than 20 years,” said Johnson. “I initially joined Rotary to network but quickly became invested in the work the organization does locally and worldwide. After moving to Nebraska I visited other Rotary clubs in the area and picked Minden because I really liked the small town connectedness.  I was new to the area, but I instantly had dozens of new friends just by joining the club.”

The Rotary Club of Minden is engaged in service projects both locally and internationally.  “Each year we raise money for global polio eradication,” said Poore.  “A few years ago we drew on our agricultural roots and developed manual corn planting devices which we sent to Nigeria.  We’ve been giving dictionaries to Minden third graders for nearly 20 years.  These and other projects allow us to give back to our community through our club.”

The club meets at noon on the second and fourth Thursday of every month at the Minden Opera House.  Meetings feature engaging speakers and visitors are welcome.  Visit mindenrotary.com for more information about the Rotary Club of Minden or to contact the club about membership or to attend a meeting.

CONTACT:  MARSE McCANN-CARPENTER, mccanncarpenterdental@gmail.com