By John D. Wilson
This past weekend we attended the Mid Winter Conference and District Board meeting. These events were a great success for the District and your Foundation.
At the District Board meeting your Foundation presented a proposed partnership agreement to aid Children's Specialized Hospital in its effort to become the most state of the art Children's Rehabilitation hospital in the Country.
This endeavor is an undertaking by the hospital to build a new facility to complement its nine locations in this state. The new facility will be located in New Brunswick as part of a health care and research campus.
The new hospital will be located with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and Squibb Medical Research facility as a health campus. The hospital will cost $55 million. The fund raising was kicked off by PSEG making a donation of $5 million.
The proposed partnership between the hospital and Kiwanis is to raise $500,000 over a TEN-YEAR period. The funds would be equally divided between the construction and outfitting cost and the establishment of an endowment to pay the treatment costs of children with no insurance or insurance that does not cover the cost of the treatments needed by the child.
After much discussion your District Board adopted a resolution recommending that this proposal be considered by the House of Delegates at the District Convention in August.
I ask each club and division to invite myself or Past Governor Bill Cater to present a program on this new proposed project. We will be available on as little as three weeks notice and will bring a representative of the hospital to speak to your club, an interclub or a divisional interclub.
If you have any questions about the proposals for our partnership with Children’s Specialized Hospital, please email them to me, Bill Cater or The Kiwanian to be answered. All questions will be responded to both directly by me and published in future editions of The Kiwanian as space allows.
The District Foundation established a scholarship fund to honor the memory of Governor Bob. We conducted a 50/50 raffle at lunch that raised $860. There were other gifts to this fund bringing the total raised to $2,110.00. I invite every club to contribute to this scholarship fund so that Governor Bob’s memory will be honored and carried into the future.
The Foundation was the recipient of pledges for the Tuva Project headed by John Green. The funds pledged will be for the purchase of dairy cows to be the source of milk and milk products for the orphanage in Tuva.
The foundation made presentations of 4 Carrington/Swain Fellowships during the Conference and conducted two educational seminars.
