1. The superb collaboration and teamwork experienced during this time and process.
2. We look to build resiliency - coming back better and stronger than before.

• Community Coordination
  • Set Up Joint Operations Center
    This was originally set-up in March and worked 7 days a week in-person and remotely for 7 weeks. Now they continue to convene 3x per week. It is a broad Coalition of Non-profit, Educational, Governmental and Private Sector members
  • Emergency Support Function
    Under the auspices of Greg Byrd and the Emergency Management Office with a shout out to Chief Pat Parker for bringing the Warren and the Private sector to bear on this important issue.
  • Regional Partnerships
    Key was dealing with assistance to businesses through Loan and Grants to assist.
• Public Policy
  • Policy Analysis: Executive Orders (more than 100) plus national, State and local regulations
  • Business Feedback Surveys
  • Regional Phased Reopening
• Re-opening Process
  • Messaging
  • Contingencies
  • Resources

• Long-term Recovery
  • Get back on track
  • Economic Diversity
  • Future of Work
  • Promoting Resiliency

• Economic Fallout 
  • Unemployment Rate over April Showed Michigan as 50th in the nation
    Leelanau fared better than the State as a whole, but Grand Traverse, Benzie, Kalkaska and Antrim all show higher unemployment than the State average.
  • Biggest Challenges
    • General Uncertainty
    • PPE/Safety Measures
    • Childcare
    • Customer Spending
    • Workforce Concerns
    • New Regulations
    • Access to Capital
  • Attracting Talent to the region
    • Childcare ranks the highest Interest in attracting people
    • Community Events and engagement, Placemaking through Arts and Culture (Quality of Life) Look for a “Creative Coast” initiative. This ranks 4th after the above, Job availability, and Where to live.
    • A keen look is ongoing into attracting a remote workforce

Wheels of Hope is a fully owned and operated Traverse City Rotary Club organization that reports to our Club Board just like every other committee in our club.  We are a 501c3, but only because we raise money from people outside the club who want their contributions to build wheelchairs to be tax-deductible.  Otherwise, we are just like every other committee in the Traverse City Rotary Club. You may recall that our club recognizes our weekly club presenters by “contributing to help build wheelchairs for polio survivors in Nigeria.” That is Wheels of Hope in action.

The Wheels of Hope Board (that is what we call our “committee”) began a revitalization program about 10 months ago with the goal of doubling our annual fundraising goal from $10,000 currently to $20,000.  Doing that would enable Ayuba Gufwan, our Rotarian partner in Nigeria, to build 133 more wheelchairs every year and give them to polio survivors free so they can go to school, get an education and a better job, get married, raise a family and live a life of dignity – Transform another person’s life for only $150.

Part of that revitalization has been to hire a local social media expert to ramp up our Facebook presence, making it a more productive fundraising tool.  The Coronavirus sort of got in the way of our revitalization program but our expertise has been very helpful over the past couple of months, anyway.  One of the ways to help make her work more productive is to have as many of our Rotary Community (That is YOU and all the members of the TC Rotary club) “LIKE” the Wheels of Hope Facebook page and “SHARE” the page with all your friends, asking them to “LIKE “ it too.  That’s the way Social Media works – it’s all about numbers.

So our request is that you “LIKE” our Facebook page  and SHARE it with all, or a large group of your personal friends.  The reason is simple.  As a Rotarian we “Do good in the world”.  One of the many ways our club does this is Wheels of Hope raises money to build wheelchairs for polio survivors in Nigeria.  Our web site is http://www.wheelsofhope.net/ .  We are NOT asking you to ask your friends for money, we just want you and your friends to “like” our page and be aware of what wheels of Hope is doing.

Another part of our revitalization was to make a new video to tell our story – and to help us raise money.  Here is a link to our new 90 second video.  Hope you like it! We will be circulating this video as far and wide as we can, very shortly. We animated our logo, too. Did you see that in the beginning of this piece?

Thanks for your help and support to make Wheels of Hope more productive, and to help Ayuba build more wheelchairs to transform the lives of more polio survivors in Nigeria.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4hOEJPEFkw&feature=youtu.be