Tag Archives: Rotary Club of Madison

December 15: Festival of Youth Arts

Posted on December 16, 2021 by | Leave a comment

–submitted by Kevin Hoffman

The program for our last meeting of the year was a video compilation of performances by five Madison-area youth arts organizations.  Featured video montages were from:

  • Opera for the Young – A professional adult touring company that brings interactive performances to elementary schools throughout the Upper Midwest.  Adult casts collaborate with music teachers and student choruses to perform specially created opera adaptations.  They reach 70,000 children at around 200 schools.  They showed snippets from Pirates of Penzance and The Magic Flute.
  • Little Picassos – A youth-focused art enrichment organization that serves low-income families and seeks to provide more equal access to art education and enrichment.  The program provides a safe and nurturing environment to create and learn about art genres and history.  It also seeks to highlight the achievements of Black, Latino and Indigenous artists.
  • Music Con Brio – Created to provide affordable, accessible, and high-quality music lessons to children regardless of a family’s ability to pay or transport their child to and from lessons.  They produce an annual community concert series in collaboration with diverse Madison groups that perform a wide range of music from chamber music to jazz and funk.
  • Madison Scouts Drum and Bugle Corps – Founded in 1920, the Madison Scouts is the oldest youth music organization in the State of Wisconsin. The program reaches over 4,000 youth students through music education programs, leadership development programs, and events hosted in Wisconsin through performing ensembles, and the Madison Scouts.  The Madison Scouts bring 165 youth from around the world including North America, Japan and Europe. 
  • Madison Ballet – Reaches around 13,000 people per year through live ballet productions at the Overture Center, School of Madison Ballet, and outreach partnerships with other non-profits in the Madison area.  The video they shared was of a performance at a state park near Delafield of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

Thanks to Neil Fauerbach for doing the video editing to present this program at our meeting.

If you missed our meeting this week, you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXm9HlJ2jfw&t=4s

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December 8: Impact of Large and Small Capital Projects on Their Communities

Posted on December 13, 2021 by | Leave a comment

submitted by Kevin Hoffman

Club Member and Past President Bob Sorge (left) and Tom Linfield (right) of the Madison Community Foundation (MCF) gave an informative, eye opening and thought-provoking presentation on the tangible benefits of non-profit capital projects on the Madison area. 

Bob gave background information on the MCF and the financial resources directed into the community.  MCF distributed about $29M in grants in 2020 that were largely directed by individual fundholders.  The MCF was also able to help other non-profits in the area leverage another $114M in resources from outside agencies for a total impact of $143M.  In addition, to create an authoritative reference for making informed giving decisions, the MCF has spent the recent past developing capabilities for researching and evaluating area non-profits.  The result has been the Greater Madison Nonprofit Directory which can be found on the MCF website.  This is a resource open to all community members. 

Tom covered the impact of capital campaigns on the Madison area by pointing out that buildings quickly become a community asset elevating the area surrounding the structure and becoming a center of development in the neighborhood.  New buildings also transform the non-profit’s capacity for services and development of resources to benefit the community.  Think about the impact that libraries, schools, health centers, community centers and affordable housing (to name a few) has on a given area.  There are about 15 building campaigns a year.  The financial impact is large not just for the physical buildout, but it also creates momentum within the non-profit for increased services, outreach, performance space, work efficiencies, and hosting/meeting space.  Once complete, this allows the non-profit entity to leapfrog to the next level to the community it serves.

If you missed our meeting on December 8, you can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QybkuIpEtT4&t=5s.

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December 1: Braver Angels: Starting Conversations, Not Fights

Posted on December 2, 2021 by | Leave a comment

–submitted by Kevin Hoffman

Cameron Swallow (left) and Susan Vergeront (right) are the state coordinators for Braver Angels, a national organization that was founded in 2016 to address the growing partisan political divide that is occurring in the United States.  Increasingly, we are defining one another not as multi-faceted human beings but as good or bad people on one side of a Red or Blue divide.  Worse, we have let this polarization become emotional and personal.  Instead of searching for truth and understanding we seek victory.  This win-lose demonization is a threat for our democracy.  Braver Angels’ mission is to bring Americans together to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen our democratic republic.  Using programs with equally balanced representation, they bring people together from opposite sides of the Red/Blue divide to seek understanding when agreement is not possible and to realize that we have more in common than we are different.  This is done through workshops that facilitate and offer strategies for communicating civilly among people who disagree – and with like-minded people who veer into contempt and ridicule.  The goal is not to change views on issues but to change and inform our views of each other.  On the policy level, by speaking to each other in civil discourse, the objective is to find collaborative solutions for the common good.

If you missed our meeting this week, you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp52UDxKE2E&t=3s

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Charles Tubbs Receives 2021 Manfred E. Swarsensky Humanitarian Service Award

Posted on November 18, 2021 by | Leave a comment

Introduced by Steve Goldberg

Top left: Steve Goldberg and Charles Tubbs; Top right: Bob Dinndorf, Charles Tubbs and Charles McLimans

Charles Tubbs is the Director of Dane County Emergency Management, but that’s just part of his story. Charles has been a model of humanitarian service and leadership throughout his entire career, leveraging his skills as a peace-maker, a problem solver, a healer, a mentor, an innovator and a bridge-builder way beyond his profession and across many communities. His lifelong career has been in the field of law enforcement and public safety, and he has approached all of his jobs in this field in much the same way Rabbi Swarsensky would have done.

For example, he has always insisted on treating incarcerated individuals with dignity and respect. That’s what the Rabbi would have done. He places a high priority on protecting the most vulnerable, marginalized citizens in our community and throughout the country. That’s what the Rabbi did. He uses his special talents and insight on mental health and addiction issues to lead local and national initiatives addressing those complex challenges. That’s what the Rabbi would have done.

Ten years ago, Charles placed himself at the center of the prolonged demonstration in and around the State Capitol building to provide a calming influence during a volatile, tense time — much as the Rabbi did during the Vietnam War protests in the sixties. And just like the Rabbi, he places the highest value on each person entrusted to his care. And today this man plays a key role in leading us through the pandemic.

He’s served in leadership roles with local human service organizations, including 100 Black Men of Madison, Journey Mental Health Center, Restoring Roots, Madison’s NAACP Chapter, and many others. 

His nominators wrote: “Charles is engaged in the same fierce pursuit of justice and mercy that made Rabbi Swarsensky such a remarkable gift to our Rotary Club, to the community and to the world. Indeed he lives the very qualities that led our club to establish the Swarsensky Humanitarian Service Award.”

He’s the type of humanitarian Rabbi Swarsensky would have been proud to know; proud to work with; and proud to walk with. So it is in that spirit that the Rotary Club of Madison presents the 40th annual Manfred Swarsensky Humanitarian Service Award to Charles Tubbs.   

Along with this award, a $2,500 grant is presented by the Madison Rotary Foundation to an agency of the recipient’s choice.  Charles Tubbs has chosen Restoring Roots to receive this grant.  

The Manfred E. Swarsensky Humanitarian Service Award was established in 1982 and identifies individuals who have, through their voluntary efforts, made a particularly outstanding contribution to the humanitarian service in the greater Madison community, in the tradition so well exemplified by the life of Rabbi Swarsensky.   The award-winning documentary video, “A Portrait:  Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky,” that was created and produced by Rotarian Dick Goldberg with assistance by Wisconsin Public Television, provides background on Manfred Swarsensky and can be viewed on YouTube, and the Rotary office also has a copy of the video for any member wishing to view it.

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Posted in 2. Meetings, Swarsensky Humanitarian Award 2015, Swarsensky Humanitarian Award Committee

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The Housing Mixtape: Madison, WI       

Posted on November 17, 2021 by | Leave a comment

November 17, 2021 Rotary Guest Speaker

–submitted by Ellsworth Brown

Justice Castaneda a man on a mission, delivered a distillation of his academic work with the passion and intensity of a community advocate.  He cares deeply about Madison, a city in which he was raised and moved many times before concluding his teenage years.  Castaneda knows intimately the challenges that caused and perpetuate the strictures of redlining, covenants and zoning.  He concluded his presentation with a summary that gives this complex subject a frame:

  • Contemporary housing patterns are limited by historical and contemporary land use policies and practices that contribute significantly to housing volatility, absence of strong community ties, and family cohesiveness.
  • Volatility in housing tenure—sometimes 50% turnover a year—is an undercurrent in pathological associations with concentrated poverty.  For example, affordability of land available for development in Madison is limited to former redline sections that are depressed and underserved, formerly redline sections of the city.  Purchase of this lower-priced land for economic development often removes the availability of affordable housing.
  • Impediments in access to democratic processes and institutions are detrimental to collective efficacy.
  • The structure of local governments, their deliberate pace extending through two or three administrations, limits the use of long-term mitigation strategies.

Castaneda added that the absence in Madison of viable, efficient transportation routes between neighborhoods, services and sources of employment in historically redlined, covenant restricted areas continues to contribute to ongoing volatility of housing.

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UW Support of Military Connected Students                                            

Posted on November 15, 2021 by | Leave a comment

–submitted by Bill Haight

Rotary Guest Speakers on November 10, 2021

Joe Rasmussen, Director of University Veteran Services and UW student Brooke Villella addressed the club on the status of veteran students. 

Since the average veteran is 6 years older than the typical student, they are often left  out of the mainstream of campus life. The Veteran Services Office is  moving from a role of being simply a facilitator of benefits, to one of reaching out to make Veterans more inclusive.  Veterans are now a part of the University’s “Identity and Inclusion” initiative, which includes other minority populations. This puts the Veteran Services Office in a more visible position than in recent years. However Veterans have yet to be assigned a dedicated meeting place on campus, a goal the Rotary Veterans Fellowship is helping them attain. 

This link takes you to information about veteran benefits available on campus: www.Veterans.wisc.edu. This link takes you to a research study on veterans in higher education: VETWAYS – The Veteran Education to Workforce Affinity and Success Study (wceruw.org)

If you missed our meeting last week, you can view it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT_cxASJ29M&t=1s

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