At Your Service(formerly RadioRotary)

Downers Grove, IL, Rotarian Jim Elliott, founder of Dive Heart, and Tinamarie Hernandez, Executive Director of the Diveheart Foundation, visit RadioRotary to describe the work Dive Heart does in providing the experience of SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) to persons with disabilities, including veterans with PSD. The experience of floating free underwater is especially importa...

Highland (NY) Rotarian and past District 7210 Governor (2020-21) Tony Marmo is now the District Membership Chair. He joined Jonah Triebwasser and Kathy Kruger on RadioRotary to discuss the value of Rotary membership and his plans to increase membership in the District. Rotarians are more diverse and often younger than the older white males that once were typical of Rotarians. Today, with varied ty...

Southern Ulster Rotarians Will Ferrell (club president) and Paul Daniels (vice president) visit RadioRotary via Zoom to discuss the community and international projects that the club supports. Southern Dutchess was originally named “Plattekill Rotary,” but with members from nearby towns in Ulster Country and even some from nearby Orange Country, the current name seems more appropriate. The good wo...

Mental Health America of Dutchess County (MHA) is a wide-ranging nonprofit that deals with many parts of mental health and well-being. This RadioRotary interview with David Campanaro, Division Director of Addiction Services at MHA and Joseph Ventimiglia, Clinical Supervisor and Director of the Chemical Dependency Crisis Center, focuses on alcoholism and other addictions. The MHA Crisis Center is o...

Executive Director Christine Hein of People’s Place Thrift Store and Food Pantry (along with many other program) visits RadioRotary, detailing the 24 human service programs run by People’s Place in Ulster County. The heart of these programs are the food pantry, the thrift store, the Community Café, and the Wellness Empowerment Center, all in Kingston, NY (but serving anyone in need at no cost). Th...

Krista Jones of Sparrow’s Nest, the charity that provides meals to the families of persons experiencing cancer, returns to RadioRotary with an update and a vision of the charity’s future. When a good friend developed stage-4 colon cancer, Ms. Jones recognized that cancer affects the whole family and began to provide daily meals for her friend’s family. Today, with mostly volunteer help, her Sparro...

The story of Toys for Tots in the Hudson Valley is provided in this radio program by Mike Binns (Ulster County Coordinator), Marine sergeant Maryabelo Ganal, Marine Corporal George Matthews, and PAMAL radio host Randy Turner (who is also part of the RadioRotary team). Toys for Tots was started in 1947 to provide toys for children in need—distributing 5,000 toys in that first year. Every holiday se...

Clean-Power-Fellow Brynn Fuller-Becker visits RadioRotary from Brooklyn via Zoom to describe to work that New Yorkers for Clean Power (NYCP) is doing to make the state a leader in renewable energy. The state has a goal of transitioning away from fossil fuels, coal mainly but also natural gas, and replacing those energy sources with wind, solar, hydroelectric, and possibly nuclear power. Some more...

Tobacco contains nicotine, a more powerful addictive substance than marijuana, opium, or cocaine. Furthermore, today’s cigarettes contain many harmful chemicals in addition to tobacco. Before 1964 there was a general understanding that cigarettes are not good for health (“coffin nails” was one nickname), and in 1964 the US surgeon general’s report made this official, although a high percentage of...

RadioRotary welcomes Kingston Rotarian Gwen McCann, secretary of the Board of the Hudson Valley Foundation for Youth Health, which supports nonprofit organizations in five mid-Hudson counties, northern Dutchess and Columbia, Greene, Ulster, and Delaware counties. The Hudson Valley Foundation for Youth Health has since 1994 awarded over $3 million to some 1,500 community organizations committed to...

Nyhisha Gibbs, Manager of Volunteers for Dutchess Outreach, and Coat Drive Volunteer Manager Mary Dynes visit RadioRotary to report on the various ways that Dutchess Outreach helps feed the community and to promote their annual winter coat drive. Dutchess Outreach is best known for running the daily Lunch Box, which supplies nutritious food for both lunch and dinner. Because of Covid-19, currently...

Fred Widman, president of the Rotary E-club of District 7210, joins Jonah Triebwasser and Sarah O’Connell-Claitor on RadioRotary to talk about the formation and present situation of the first-ever international E-club, which has its home base in the Hudson Valley but includes members from around the world, currently including Sweden, Brazil, Nigeria, India, and Turkey. The club has regular Zoom me...

North Rockland Rotarian and 7210 Past District Governor (2006-07) Carole Tjoa, currently the District PolioPlus Chair, once again joins RadioRotary to update the progress on polio eradication. After polio in 1979, was completely eliminated from the U.S. by the Salk and Sabin vaccines, Rotary used the vaccines to eradicated polio in the Philippines, then in 1985 carried the program to South America...

CAPE is the Council on Addiction Prevention & Education in Dutchess County. For this program, Dora Celestino, Community Educator, and Christina Goebel, Senior Peer Engagement Specialist from CAPE visit RadioRotary to talk about how CAPE works with schools and teenagers to educate them about the harm caused by this common form of substance use disorder—including addiction to alcohol, other drug...

As Columbus Day approaches, so does the 14thAnnual Italian Festival in Kingston, sponsored by the Ulster County Italian American Foundation. Festival Chair Anna Brett and Highland Rotarian Tony Marmo join Jonah Triebwasser and Kathy Kruger for a fun-filled program on the fun-filled festival, which takes place beside the Roundout Creek in T.R. Gallo Park at the lower end of Broadway in Kingston, NY...

RadioRotary welcomes Mary French, director (and founder) of The Dictionary Project, a nonprofit that provides dictionaries, primarily to children in third grade. Inspired by the example of Annie Plummer, who began giving dictionaries to schools near her home in Georgia in 1992, Mary French of Charleston, South Carolina, and her husband started The Dictionary Project in 1995. Four years later the P...

Jill Bubel, Trauma Injury Prevention Coordinator at Vassar Hospital, visits RadioRotary to promote the 2021 Fall Prevention Week, which begins with a picnic at Poughkeepsie’s Bowdoin Park. sponsored by the Dutchess Country Office for the Aging. The event includes a balance class based on cognitive restructuring, Tai Chi, information about making homes safer, and more, including the introduction of...

Pleasant Valley Rotarian Dave Kruger, a member of the RadioRotary team, shows up to talk about the bicentennial celebration of the Town of Pleasant Valley. The Town had been a part of the Town of Clinton until 1821, when it was split off. The Bicentennial celebration. September 17 through 19, is an expansion of the annual Pleasant Valley Days and it will include such favorites from that event as R...

Rotarians Jim Halderman (Golden, CO, Rotary) and George Kun (Columbus, OH, Rotary) visit RadioRotary to promote the September 18, 2021, event, Shaping Peace Through the Art of Music, an International online concert in support of the United Nations’ International Day of Peace, which is on September 20 this year. The concert can be heard worldwide with a reservation from the site “shapingpeacethroug...

Brian Doyle , CEO for Family Services, describes for RadioRotary listeners the enormous scope of his organization, which operates in Dutchess, Orange, and Ulster counties. He emphasizes the Behavioral Health Centers in several locations, which promote mental health, and the Center for Victim Safety and Support, which provides 24-hour non-residential, comprehensive services to victims of domestic v...

Montecito (CA) Rotarian Kerri Murray, president of ShelterBox USA, joins Jonah Triebwasser and Kathy Kruger to talk about how the ShelterBox organization helps survivors of disasters and refugees from conflicts around the world. ShelterBox is a program that provides disaster or conflict relief based on a specially designed tent that can hold an entire family and also the tools, food, solar lightin...

Andy Imperati, president and CEO of the world famous Dutchess County Fair joins RadioRotary to tell about the events at this year’s fair, which has returned for its 175th season after a one-year break due to Covid 19. In 2021, although masks are suggested for the unvaccinated, proof of vaccination is not required for entry. The many familiar Fair events will be returning, including all the animals...

Ugandan Climate Crisis activist Vanessa Nakate visits RadioRotary from Africa via Zoom for an essential account of how climate change has become a crisis, and about the need for Climate Justice. Her home nation of Uganda, in East Africa along Lake Victoria, has been ravaged by climate-induced floods in the east and west and climate-induced drought in the north. While major lakes in the western Uni...

Highland Rotarians Tony Marmo, Steve Laubach, and club-president Dave Lambert visit RadioRotary via Zoom to tell how the club’s principal fundraiser, the annual Ribfest, which started in 2005, has been reconfigured for the Covid-19 era. For a second year, the Highland Rotary Club has decided to replace the Hudson Valley Ribfest at the Ulster County Fairgrounds with a fundraiser that helps local re...

Behavior specialist Linwood Burke and mental health intensive care manager Lashaveous Dicker, now both aiding police in dealing with situations where strong emotions or mental-health issue are involved, are the workers assigned by Mental Health America of Dutchess County (MHA) to help handle these dicey calls. Mr. Dicker is on every call that Beacon Police make, while Mr. Burke travels with the po...