Our August 14th guest speaker was Joseph “Joe” Richardson who presented on the topic, “Lunch Out of Landfills.” A Rotarian from the Southern Frederick Rotary Club (Maryland, US), Joe has created a complete Lunch out of Landfills Toolkit that Rotarians can use to launch a program to empower schools to divert organics from landfills.  Food waste currently causes an estimated 124 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions in the US every year. 
🧑🏼‍🎓👩🏾‍🎓👩‍🎓
Through Lunch out of Landfills, your club can foster students’ environmental awareness and leadership.  You may also be able to save schools money.  Joe led a pilot test of Lunch out of Landfills in one Frederick County elementary school last semester. Fifth graders documented an 85% reduction in the volume of waste sent to the landfill. 
👩🏾‍🎓🧑🏼‍🎓👨‍🎓
This also slashed the emissions caused by transporting garbage to the landfill over 60 miles away from the school.  Frederick County Superintendent Dr. Theresa Alban, also a Rotarian, was so impressed that she allocated $10,000 to help expand the project to a total of 14 schools this year.
🍕
Participating schools recruit students as mentors to each other, and set up sorting stations in the cafeteria where students learn to separate what’s left on their trays among five options: a share table for food that’s untouched or still wrapped, a bucket for liquids, a bucket for organics that can be composted, a bin for recyclables and a bin for trash.
🥗
Our Rotary Club is fortunate to have so many members with wonderful contacts such that we are able to attract a wide variety of newsworthy, sought-after speakers! The diversity of our speakers reflects the diverse interests of our members.
💫
#DCRotaryClub #hybridmeeting
#clubmeeting #zoommeeting #newsworthy #guestspeaker #RotaryInternational #RI #RotaryDistrict7620 #TheMagicofRotary ...

Today, we welcome Her Excellency Justice Esme Jynet Chombo, the Ambassador of the Republic of Malawi to the United States.  Prior to her appointment, Esme Chombo served for 18 years as a Judge of the High Court of Malawi.
⚖️
Her adjudication experience spars over 28 years as she first joined the Malawi Judiciary as Chief Resident Magistrate from 1986 to 1995, supervising all magistrates and overseeing management of all lower courts in the Northern Region of Malawi.
⚖️
Before progressing to the High Court, she worked as Company Secretary for Press Corporation Limited and Press Agriculture Limited between 1995 and 2002.
🌍
Esme Chombo holds a Master’s in Women’s Law and Human Rights from the University of Zimbabwe, a Master’s in Strategic Management from the University of Derby, UK, and a Bachelor of Law – (LLB) (Hons) from University of Malawi.
 💫
Our Rotary Club is fortunate to have so many members with wonderful contacts such that we are able to attract a wide variety of newsworthy, sought-after speakers! The diversity of our speakers reflects the diverse interests of our members.
💫
#DCRotaryClub #hybridmeeting
#clubmeeting #zoommeeting #newsworthy #guestspeaker #RotaryInternational #RI #RotaryDistrict7620 #TheMagicofRotary ...

Our August 7th guest speaker, Dr. Daman S. Walia, presented on the topic, “Carbon Farming for Fast Track to Net Zero While Increasing Food Supply and Improving Soil Fertility.”
🌱
Founder of ARCTECH Inc. in 1988, Dr. Walia is responsible for the organizational, management, and technical direction of its pioneering biotechnology approach of environmentally safer ways of using mineable and deep unmineable coal resources.  Dr. Walia and his team now, through interdisciplinary scientific discovery and entrepreneurial acumen, is offering technological solutions and products from coal for producing economical cleaner fuels, and products for agriculture and environmental cleanup, while moving the coal up the value chain, monetizing the stranded coals. 
🌱
These approaches offer the potential of resulting in zero waste and a zero to negative carbon footprint from the use of vast resources of coal available throughout the world for meeting the growing human needs for cleaner energy, safer foods, cleaner water and environment while protecting the planet and its other inhabitants, a “Balanced Sustainability” vision for new frontiers of commercial opportunities.
🌱
Dr. Walia, while young at the age of 10 or so, was indoctrinated into the Rotary “Service Before Self” by his grandfather, Mr. Bakshih Singh Ahluwalia Sikand, the President of the Rotary Club in Nabha, India in 1950, when he was assigned to serve tea to the club members at meetings held at his home.
💫
Our Rotary Club is fortunate to have so many members with wonderful contacts such that we are able to attract a wide variety of newsworthy, sought-after speakers! The diversity of our speakers reflects the diverse interests of our members.
💫
#DCRotaryClub #hybridmeeting
#clubmeeting #zoommeeting #newsworthy #guestspeaker #RotaryInternational #RI #RotaryDistrict7620 #TheMagicofRotary ...

Our July 31st guest speaker, Dr. Linton Wells II, presented, “Building Sustainable Resilience and Improving Disaster Management.” Dr. Wells has more than thirty years of leadership experience at the interface of policy and technology. He is Executive Advisor to George Mason University’s (GMU) Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities (C-RASC), and chairs the Advisory Group to the C5I Center at GMU.  Recent research has focused on building sustainable community resilience and improving disaster response, international cyber resilience and critical infrastructure protection, countering disinformation in complex information environments, and supply chain risk management, as well as the policy implication of accelerating, converging technological change.
🌅
From 1998-2007 Dr. Wells was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary (PDASD) in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) for Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I) and then in Networks and Information Integration (NII).  He also served as Acting Assistant Secretary and DoD CIO.  In 2014, he completed 51 years with DoD, including 26 years as a Navy surface warfare officer.
🌄
He is a 1967 US Naval Academy graduate.  He holds a master’s in mathematical sciences (OR concentration) and a PhD in international relations from Johns Hopkins University.  He is also a graduate of the National Institute for Defense Studies in Tokyo.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linton_Wells_II
💫
Our Rotary Club is fortunate to have so many members with wonderful contacts such that we are able to attract a wide variety of newsworthy, sought-after speakers! The diversity of our speakers reflects the diverse interests of our members.
💫
#DCRotaryClub #hybridmeeting
#clubmeeting #zoommeeting #newsworthy #guestspeaker #RotaryInternational #RI #RotaryDistrict7620 #TheMagicofRotary ...