Posted by Kelly Salwei
DR. ABUL SHARAH: INTERNATIONAL VILLAGE CLINIC (IVC)
Dr. Sharah was introduced by Mark Lewis who has traveled to India and visited the clinic founded in 1999. Dr. Sharah thank EPAM Rotary for supporting IVC over the past 10 years. Located at the east end of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India, the clinic has grown from a mobile clinic in 2002 to acquiring land and building a hospital which gets its power from solar panels.
 
Dr. Sharah spends half of each year in India and half in Bloomington, MN. The clinic serves 200,000 people with a staff of 60 including four doctors on an annual budget of $150,000. IVC serves the people in the region through curative and preventative programs. The curative treated 37,435 patients in 2017. The preventative
program served 60 villages and 28 schools focusing on four areas:
 
 1. Nutrition which provides nutritional supplements to pregnant women (412 in 2017) and infants to six months and children to age 5 (1,667 in 2017).
2. Vaccination.
3. Health Education.
4. Family planning education.
 
 

In 2017 Dr. Sharah was contacted by a teacher who told him the government was closing a school and after initially resisting, he agreed to start up the school but that meant a huge rebuild of the facility. They startedwith a nursery school in April 2017 and Kindergarten added in 2018. A large focus of the school is English  proficiency which is essential for students to get accepted in good colleges.
 
Learn more about IVC at http://www.villageclinic.org/
 
ANNOUNCEMENTS
  • The 2018/2019 slate of Board Members were approved. Board meetings will be the second Tuesday of the month.
  • Vino Classico planning is underway and tickets will be picked up next week. Looking for help with silent auction.
 
SPOTLIGHT ON LAURIE PRYOR
Laurie talked about growing up in Austin, MN. She was married in 1979 and with her husband, they have three children and six grandchildren all in Minneapolis. Laurie received a degree in communications and upon retirement spent a year as a volunteer coordinator with a Mental Health Organization and has embraced the mantra “make it okay to talk”. She elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives serving a district including Northern Eden Prairie.
 
NEW MEMBER INDUCTION: DAVID FREELAND
Dave Freeland was inducted. He operates Farmers Insurance office in Eden Prairie and lives in Belle Plain with his wife and three sons. Welcome Dave!
 
HAPPY FIVES
  • Jeanne Zetah – house listed yesterday.
  • Carol Bomben – Onward EP (home for homeless youth) opening and four of the board members are EPAM members. Raising money to hire social worker to work with residents.
  • Kevin Kraemer – returned from “best trip ever” to Ireland.
  • Dan O’Brien – great vacation to Lake Geneva and Chicago and attended 50 th HS reunion.
  • Mark Lewis – happy to see everyone and his daughter recently got married.
  • Jane McGinty – happy to have father and daughter with her at meeting.
VISITORS
Jack McGinty - Guest of Jane McGinty
Krista McGinty - Guest of Jane McGinty
Molly Zeller and Patrick Yang - Student Interns