ha! ha! ha! wygralismy! (mail od Stevena)

Dear Everyone!
I wanted to email you and let you all know the great news!!! Just this weekend myself, Robert Thompson, Stewart Fairburn, Donna Thompson, District Governor Vickie Randel and all 16 of our inbound students attended our annual multidistrict Youth Exchange winter conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma. For those of you that are unaware, our district is a member of the multidistrict South Central Rotary Youth Exchange (SCRYE) which stretches across 15 states from South Dakota to Texas and from New Mexico across to Mississipi. We currently sit at 36 member districts and are tied for the largest Multidistrict in all of Rotary. This year we had over 200 exchange students and former exchange students there as well as almost 200 Rotarians. Also there was RI President elect Ray Klinginsmith and RI director elects Fred Hahn and Phil Silvers. Very genuine gentlemen who have dedicated their lives to Rotary.
Now to the good part. This year SCRYE has developed an awards program to recognize districts that it feels have programs that are role models for other districts. At the luncheon on Saturday there were 7 awards given. Our district took 3 of those awards. We were honored with the "WOW' award for our district starting the "Friends of Youth Exchange" email system to inform the district on inbound students. We also received the "Thats Outstanding" award for tripling the size of our program and growing our committee size by 25% from one Rotary year to the next. Robert Thompson of the Gardner Rotary club was honored with the "The Spark Plug Award" for outstanding rotarians who go above the call of duty to do a job within Youth Exchange. Robert not only is our districts Polio eradication chair but he is his club's president and jumped into the job of Social Chair for our Youth Exchange program when our program swelled from 5 to 16 inbound students.
That night at our annual banquet that was attended by close to 400 people we were honored with the "District of the Year Award". What an honor. It was great to get this honor in front of so many people that I admire on so many levels. My vision is cloud from the moment but I think a standing ovation may have also happened. Also to hear the yells of our inbound exchange students was a bonus. (Later on the bus to the Lock-in I got to hear our Inbound Burak from Turkey who is being hosted by Blue Rapids and our Inbound Ysmael from Venezuela who is being hosted by Osawatomie lead a bus load of 50 exchange students in a chant of " We love you Wheatley, We love you Kansas!") That didn't hurt either. We couldn't have received this award without the help of the District Youth Exchange Committee and all the families that are hosting our wonderful exchange students this year. I appreciate everything everyone does to make this program work.
I have taken a position on the Board of Driectors for SCRYE as our Training officer. Rest assured that I will not let my duties there diminish my committment to our districts program. I would love to have the same level of committment to our inbounds for next year as we had this year. (Just for the record, 16 inbounds is a record for our district). We could always use more help at the district and club level. If you want to volunteer to help on any level please let me or your local Rotary Club know.

Yay for us!!!!

Stephen Wheatley
District 5710 YEO