District Governor Shannon Coleman was our speaker on August 10th. She told us a little bit about her background, including that her nickname is Dory (from Finding Nemo) and her motto is “just keep swimming.” She introduced to the 2022-23 Rotary theme - Imagine Rotary and discussed what that means to her. She has talked to a lot of Rotarians over the last few years, trying to get feedback about what makes Rotary work and what would make it better. One thing she learned is that she wants to focus on making Rotary fun! She also came up with the idea of the district being brought to the club level in an effort of collaboration. She says that people stay in Rotary for the connections and relationship, so she wants to focus on retention and create an experience where everyone wants to stay. Shannon also talked about what donations to foundation do in the world and at the district level. She just signed a global grant for a weekend camp for children from the Ukraine. With regards to polio, her goal is for each club to give $1500 to Polio Plus and accomplish that by involving non-Rotarians as well as Rotarians through the Pies for Polio project. She gave us the dates for the upcoming Rotary Foundation dinner and the Conference of Clubs, which will be in Corpus Christi. She concluded her talk by asking us all to imagine the Rotary experience we would like to have! After Shannon’s talk, everyone joined together to put together bags of food for the Backpack friends project that provides food for children who suffer from weekend hunger. A fun time was had by all!! More information about backpack friends can be found at: https://www.backpackfriends.com.