The Romeo Rotary Club, Kids Coalition Against Hunger, and the Four County Community Foundation hosted a meal-packaging event recently at Grace Lutheran Church in Bruce Township.

“Each packet contains enough to provide a balanced, nutritious meal to six adults or 12 children,” Sharon Smith, Romeo Rotary Club president, said.

“It’s a fun time, only takes a couple of hours, and is a great way to make new friends while also doing something very impactful,” Smith said. “We packed a total of 1,692 meal bags which feeds 10,136 people. Each box contains 36 meals and we packed 47 boxes. The event went great.”

For that, she credited the Romeo Area Optimist Club, and Monica VanOvermeer of the Saline Rotary Club; Mike Burwell of Kids Coalition Against Hunger; Pastors Eric Majeski and Mike Phillips and the congregation of Grace Lutheran Fellowship for providing work space and providing volunteers.

“Also, Kathy Dickens of the Four County Community Foundation, whose generous grant of $3,500 helped cover the cost of the event,” she said. “One third of the meals that are packaged go to the local communities where they are assembled. In Romeo, we donated to the Agape Center and are working with The Red Cross to see that some go to victims of the weather disasters in Tennessee and North Carolina. The next third goes to over 30 different third-world countries that Kids Coalition Against Hunger supports on an ongoing basis. The final third is stored in the KCAH warehouse for disaster relief.”

Previously, the Ann Arbor Rotary Club sponsored a meal-packing event, attended by two Romeo Rotarians.

“Dave Pyrce and Bill Himelburger were so inspired by it they came back and said we should see about doing that here,” Smith said. “About 125 people came to the church. It’s just a great cause and a great way to spend a couple of hours meeting new friends, catching up with old friends, just a real great spirit of community. It fulfills one of the mandates of Rotary International, that each club perform some sort of international service, and that definitely fits that bill.”

The Rotary Epic Day of Service (see epicdayofservice.org) is May 17. RI — established 120 years ago — is calling on its 1.2 million members in 45,000 clubs in nearly 200 countries to perform community service on that day.

Romeo Rotary doubled its membership recently — from four to eight members.

“We are trying to organize something with the Village of Romeo Tree Board but have no firm details yet,” Smith said. “Possibilities include replacing evergreen trees with the hope that one will become the village Christmas tree.

“We used to be quite a large club that came together in 1928,” she said. “My grandfather was a member of Rotary and that made me want to join. We think we will have our ninth member before long. We’d love to get our club back to being one of the big ones.”

She added having a smaller club meant they had to cut back their scholarship grants, and that a larger club could offer larger scholarships to local students. The club has volunteered to take on Romeo’s Vintage Fest on June 21 and make it an annual fundraiser. A possibility this year is it has a 1940s theme.

“One thing we did and that we are hoping to have unveiled in the Romeo Village Park is the beautiful old brass drinking fountain. We restored it but it’s not hooked up yet and we are crossing our fingers that we can reveal that piece soon,” she said.

For more information, contact at Smith at 978-771-8694 or smittykay@msn.com.

Mount Clemens Rotarians help shelter program

The Mount Clemens Rotary Club recently did a service project with the WAVE Project — Welcoming All Valuing Everyone. It serves people experiencing homelessness with a mobile shower service, a mobile clothing closet, the Macomb County Warming Shelter, and pantries. The Macomb County Winter Shelter program has provided emergency shelter and thousands of showers, items of clothing, hygiene items and food.

Julie Miller headed up a crew of Rotary volunteers to do a three-hour winter shelter cleaning at Trinity Church in Warren. They scrubbed cots and floors during a day prior to shelter-users’ evening arrival.

“Several Rotarians ventured to the Macomb County Warming Shelter housed at Trinity Lutheran Church Warren. Program Director Marcie Burt put us to work deep cleaning the church’s fellowship hall to give the shelter guests a pleasant, clean environment,” she said.

“We got involved with the Wave Project at the suggestion of (retired Clinton Township supervisor and Rotarian) Bob Cannon,” Miller said. “I would say that our core ideals revolve around service. The WAVE Project reflects that as well because they provide a diversity of services for people in the community that really need them. As Rotarians, we endeavor to build goodwill and understanding in the community. We look for service opportunities with different organizations within the community that support a diverse group of people.”

Some of the host churches for this year include Christ Church Fraser, Christian Trinity Church Warren, First United Methodist Church Mount Clemens, Kensington Church Clinton Township, King of Kings Lutheran Church, Love Life Family Christian Center, Shores Assembly of God, Trinity Lutheran Church Utica, The Woods Church, Shepherd’s Gate Church, Utica United Methodist Church.

For one week, churches provide a hot meal, and a grab-and-go breakfast.

The winter program has helped hundreds of adults since November, including seniors, experiencing homelessness around metro Detroit who are turned away from shelters that have no vacancy. Their experience shows that homelessness is on the rise.

WAVE official Rocky Pinheiro was a recent speaker at the Mount Clemens Kiwanis Club. Kiwanian Theresa Randolph reported that he said their mobile shower van relies on churches for electrical hookups and water drainage and that the van is stocked with clean clothing.

Send news of service clubs and veterans organizations to Linda May at lindamay@ameritech.net or call landline 586-791-8116.