GREETERS
Bob Bishop
Grant Ringel

BACK TABLE DUTY
Debbie Acton
Jim McGraw

• • •

The mailing address for the
Bellevue Rotary Club is:

Laurie Larson
Club Administrator
P.O. Box 523
Bellevue, WA 98009
bellevuerotary@seanet.com
Ph 425 451-3819
Fax 425 451-8025

• • •

Are you receiving The Rotarian Magazine?
If not, contact Laurie Larson or email The Rotarian Magazine.

Larry Abner, 03/01
Glen Curda, 03/01
Sally Gray, 03/01
Colleen Crowley, 03/02
Leland Teng, 03/04
Stacy Graven, 03/05
Frances Gough, 03/13
Nancy Pasternak, 03/13
Sam Esayian, 03/15
Tom Eckhart, 03/16
Jane Hague, 03/20
Milt Douglas, 03/27
Lynn Jones, 03/27

NEXT WEEK'S PROGRAM:

Richard Leider, President of Trinity Real Estate & Immediate Past Chairman of the Bellevue Downtown Association

Charlie Hafenbrack, Director of Business Development, GLY Construction & Past Chairman of the Bellevue Downtown Association

"Neighbors in the Heart of the City: An Update on the Continuing Evolution of Downtown Bellevue"

Richard Leider
President, Trinity Real Estate
Immediate Past Chair, Bellevue Downtown Association

Since founding Trinity Real Estate in 2001, Richard Leider has been instrumental in providing advisory, development, and investment services to clients for projects valued in aggregate at nearly $1 billion and totaling more 3.6 million square feet. Projects include office, industrial, hotel, retail, residential and mixed use.

Richard previously served as the Seattle region Vice President for investments with Spieker Properties—a west coast Real Estate Investment Trust purchased by Equity Office in 2001. In that capacity he developed, acquired, and managed more than 2.6 million square feet of office, business park and industrial properties.

He earned a bachelor’s degree and MBA from the University of Washington, and he completed the Advanced Management Program at Oxford University. Richard is a Past President of the Washington State Chapter of NAIOP and Immediate Past Chair of the Bellevue Downtown Association. He also participated on the Citizen Advisory Committee for Bellevue’s Downtown Implementation Plan.

As an industry expert, Richard has been referenced in the New York Times and is a contributing source for ULI/PriceWaterhouseCooper’s Emerging Trends publication. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Pacific Real Estate Institute, Economic Development Commission and the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.

• • •

Charlie Hafenbrack
Director of Business Development, GLY Construction
Past Chair, Bellevue Downtown Association

As Director of Business Development for Bellevue-based GLY Construction, Charlie plays a lead role in matching GLY as a construction partner with major regional clients. Notable relationships and resulting projects include Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Bellevue Art Museum, Highline Medical Center, Kemper Development and Vulcan NW.

Charlie remains deeply rooted in community leadership and economic development activities, especially on the Eastside. He is a board member for the Bellevue Downtown Association, where he served as chair in 2001. Charlie continues to devote time and talent to committees for the local chapters of the Urban Land Institute and National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, American Institute of Architects and serves on the advisory committee for the UW Certificate Course in Commercial Real Estate.

Prior to GLY, Charlie was Director of Business Development for Charles Pankow Builders in Bellevue. He also spent 12 years in an executive role at Sellen Construction in Seattle, most recently as Vice President of Marketing. Before joining the construction industry, Charlie was a Vice President for Great Western Malting, a division of Penwest, a manufacturer of value-added agricultural commodities.

Charlie holds a double degree in business administration and agricultural economics from Washington State University. He also completed the Certificate Course in Commercial Real Estate at University of Washington.

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Grant Applications
Phil Bevan

The Bellevue Rotary Community Grants Committee is taking applications for grants, with the cut off date being March 15th to submit. These are the general guidelines. 

1) Grant money must be beneficial to the Eastside Community.

2) Maximum amount awarded will not exceed $5,000.

3) Funds are not to be used for ongoing expenses (operational); this rule may be bent and will be looked at on a case by case basis.

4) The application form needs to be filled out and can be found here on the website

If you have questions, contact Phil Bevan (Ph 425-450-9616).

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Rob Rose, Reporting from Kathmandu, Nepal

March 3, 2006 —
Would you like to hear a wonderful, true story? On our third day back in Nepal my wife Gina and I visited our good friend, Ms. Indira Shrestha, director of the Welfare Society for the Hearing Impaired and principal of the Kathnmandu School for the Deaf. She introduced us to a very small child named Manous. Manous is nine years old. He is profoundly blind and deaf. When he was admitted last November to the newly created deaf-blind program at Indira’s school he was not able to stand or even sit up on his own.

Since birth Manous had been lying on the floor and during the day, his parents, who worked in the field, had kept him tied up in a misguided attempt to keep him from hurting himself while they were out working. The result was a little boy whose body was crumpled and curled up, hunched and crooked.

Keeping in mind that he had only been admitted to the school this last November, and that in his nine years of life he had not yet learned to communicate in any way with any one, when you see him standing, working his way by feel with the support of a wall, you catch your breath, rub back a tear and realize the gravity of the transformation you are fortunate enough to be able to witness.

Manous pats at the wall firmly as he steadfastly makes his way back and forth, a miracle in the making. He is one of four young children who have begun this program. To start with they are having daily physical therapy and learning basic life skills, like toilet training, eating on their own with a spoon and brushing their teeth. They are also beginning to learn how to communicate with others through touch. Being there at the beginning of this transformation is a both overwhelming and inspiring. Gina and I are truly fortunate to witness such a remarkable event.

In past years at the School for the Deaf, with Rotary’s help, we have built a library and recreation hall, painted and fixed up the boy’s dorm, with the help of volunteers, and provided financial assistance to a new vocational cooking/training program, which has been very successful. We also have several projects in the works for this year. One is to develop a website for them, with the help of the Patan Rotaract Club, to give them international donor exposure. The other is a matching grant project to bring over 400 hearing aids to the children at the school who could benefit from them. Very few of the children currently have hearing aids. I can also envision providing future assistance to the deaf-blind program.

Gina and I thank everyone in the Bellevue Rotary Club for supporting the Rotary Foundation and our club fundraisers, which are the financial means by which these life-changing projects are achieved.

• • •

March 7, 2006 —
I began writing an upbeat, fun article from the other day that detailed our wonderful visit to the Disabled Children’s Center (DNC) and the humorous details of trying to find our way home through the maze of Kathmandu’s streets. However, after what we saw today, I felt compelled to try to put our experience into words as best I can.

One of the persons I had planned to visit on this trip was Dikchhya Chapagai (Sounds like ‘Deekchha Chapagee’) whom I had met on last year’s trip. She runs a small orphan home in Kathmandu and through donations I saved up last year we provided some funds to help her to buy a sewing machine she uses to teach others how to sew, school admission fees and one month’s rent on the home. I wanted to take Gina to meet her and find out how she was doing. It was a heart-wrenching experience. She has taken in about 13 children between the ages of 3-12, all of them orphans.

Dikchhya earns funds for the orphan home through her skills at computer repair, as well as by giving training in computer and sewing. Those who prove that they can’t afford the tuition (150 rupees per month, or about $2) get the training classes for free. She was inspired and has patterned her life after Mother Teresa’s.

Many of the children at the home are from a particular area of Nepal called Rolpa, where the people are devastatingly poor and family planning is non-existent. Parents regularly have in excess of 10 children per family with not enough food for all, and if the parents don’t survive the harsh environment, the children are left abandoned. This is a very difficult situation. Two dirty and disheveled 3-year-olds had just arrived the evening before and sat together silently. The Rolpa region where they are from speaks a different dialect from other Nepalis, however they will soon pick up the language. They appear to be quick learners, as our friend, Rabendra soon got them to place their hands together in the formal Nepal greeting of “Namaste.”

After all of the smaller kids had filtered into the dimly lit room, an older boy, perhaps around the age of 12, silently entered. We asked him, “Tapaiko nam ke ho?” (What is your name?) — no answer. We inquired again, but again, but still no answer. Dikchhya told us that this boy was deaf and mute. He was an orphan whom she found abandoned, living on the street and eating out of a garbage heap. Did he have a name, we inquired? She informed us that she had named him “Lovely” and that he had never spoken. She had been taking care of him for the past eight months, and he was adjusting to living in her home. He sat down on the floor next to Gina, and as we drank our tea, Gina began trying to communicate with him. He would copy each movement that Gina made and could evidently read her lips, although he only copied whatever motions/movements Gina made. Gina began to try what little sign language she had previously learned, signing each letter slowly, deliberately ... L- O- V- E- L-Y. When I saw Lovely perfectly copy each of the letters that Gina had shown him, I felt that sitting before us was a true diamond in the rough, someone who was just waiting for the light switch to be turned on to illuminate his world , for the key to unlock a sharp mind that had been imprisoned within an imperfect body. I was overcome by emotion and fought back the tears as I envisioned what might become of this quiet child with the proper help and plenty of love.

You can be assured that we will be making immediate inquiries into helping Lovely. We are very fortunate indeed to be good friends with Ms. Indira Shrestha, director and principal of the school for the hearing impaired here in Kathmandu (mentioned in the previous article). I plan to take Indira out to meet him before we leave for home and have Lovely tested to find out if he could learn and prosper at her school. Wherever he is admitted, Gina and I will have the privilege of sponsoring him.

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2007-2008 Ambassadorial & Cultural Scholarship Applications Are Available

Rick Taylor

This Rotary year District 5030 has available at least two one-year Ambassadorial Scholarships and one six month Cultural Scholarship that will pay up to $26,000 for education in another country.  Rotary International has requested that we consider scholars whose study fields will have a strong humanitarian impact.

For information and applications please contact me (Ph 425-454-4858).

Thank you for your help.

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Rotary District 5030 Leadership Assembly

Presidents, Presidents-Elect, Club Secretaries, Treasurers, all incoming Officers and Board Members, All Committee Chairs, Newsletter Editors, Webmasters, New Members, and all interested Rotarians are invited to join District Governor-Elect Mike Montgomery at the District's Annual Kick-Off Event!

The Assembly is scheduled for Saturday, May 20, at the Bellevue Community College, from 7:30AM-12:00 noon.

If you are interested in volunteering or contributing to the 2006 District 5030 Leadership Assembly, please contact District Leadership Assembly Chairperson Son Michael Pham (Ph 206-484-4830).

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VERSION OF THIS INFORMATION.