SAMP
COORDINATING COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES
TUESDAY, Feb. 18, 2003

The meeting commenced at 5:30 pm at the Appleton Public Library conference room.  Attending were Donna Kidder, Ed Shannon, Carol Busey, Barbara Kelly and Ray Durkee.

Carol Busey reported that Tim Higgins had resigned from his position as co-chair of the coordinating committee, but that he would continue to be involved with the group.

She elaborated that there was a need to get the committee organization restructured, involving a delegation of responsibilities. Tasks that could be delegated include:

• Writing and sending thank you notes
• Handling communications with Service & Supply will continue to be done by Mac McElrone
• Someone is needed to coordinate funding and grant writing. Dave Rothman will continue to be involved in some aspects of this, but more help is needed.
• Member drive – need to go to other clubs in the district to build support and understanding of the project. We’d like to have a contact in each club who could receive meeting minutes, attend some meetings, encourage others in that club to attend packing sessions occasionally, spearhead the collection of medical equipment in each area, participate in decision-making about where supplies will be sent, etc.
• Get more members of our club and other area clubs active packing regularly. We can’t continue to depend on the same people every month.

We also need to clarify the membership of the committee, and act on the proposed mission of the project and its new name.

The best new name proposed so far has been "Sharing Around (the world) Medical Project". It was agreed that there is a significant advantage to a name that retains the acronym SAMP, since there is a good deal of name recognition with that. Because so few committee members were in attendance, we will vote on the name change at the next committee meeting.

The proposed mission statement for SAMP is: "SAMP, sponsored by District 6220, works Rotary-to-Rotary offering medical and other humanitarian supplies, by providing materials to improve the quality of life for people in developing countries." Adoption of the mission will also be taken up at the next meeting.

Carol will contact Eric Paulsen to discuss the potential for developing club contacts with other district clubs. Possibly we will draft a letter to send to all club presidents requesting that they designate someone from their club for us to contact. If we are successful in creating a list, Barbara will collect the email addresses of all those and create an electronic mailing list. We will use that to communicate happenings, send announcements of packing dates, announce shipments going out and news of their receipt on the other end, minutes of our meetings, etc.

The District conference is in May and perhaps we should consider having some sort of presence there. Another possibility is the PETS conference in April at the Paper Valley. Carol will check on possibilities.

Donna volunteered to send thank you gifts and/or notes to those that Carol tells her about.

Appleton downtown club member Jim Bellings has been working with the Wisconsin Nicaragua Partners of America, and he has again requested that we consider sending a shipment to their counterparts there. The Chinandega Rotary Club will be involved on the other end. Our group would need to get the shipment to Stevens Point, but it would be handled from there by the Partnership. Those present unanimously approved sending a shipment to this organization.

We will also be getting a shipment out to Dr. Stoughton in Harare Zimbabwe in the very near future.

Barbara distributed the Dec. 31, 2002 consolidated account summary which had been prepared by Nancy Johnshoy.

Next meeting will be Wednesday, March 12^th at 5:30 PM at the Appleton Public Library, lower level meeting room.