Congratulations to Joe Brennan of the Rotary Club of Half Moon Bay for being selected as Rotary District 5150's Rotarian of the Month for September 2023! Joe has been a Rotarian since 2000. He began his Rotary journey with the Rotary Club of San Francisco and then joined the Rotary Club of Half Moon Bay in 2013. Joe has served as Club President and is the consummate Rotarian. He attends every weekly meeting and participates in almost all of our Club's community service activities.
Dedication to his Community: Joe leads our Breakfast for the Needy Program for the Abundant Grace Coastside Worker Agency. Monthly, he organizes our Club members into two early morning teams to prepare a warm meal for our unhoused community members.
For the past three years Joe has been part of a small team to assemble supplies for needy families served by Coastside Hope, an organization that our Club supports with District-Designated funds. Each month, Joe works with one or two other Club members to purchase and pack approximately $80 worth of household necessities for eight identified families.
Since 2021, Joe has been our Little Library guru. Our Club co-sponsored, built, and installed seven Little Libraries across the community. Joe maintains those Little Libraries, checking on them monthly and replacing parts and books as needed.
Joe is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in Half Moon Bay. For the past five years, he has arranged for our Club and the Odd Fellows to socialize together each holiday season. This has built a strong relationship between the two clubs.
International Service: In 2022 when COVID prevented our Club's team from helping a medical clinic in Mexico, Joe purchased medical supplies with money from his own pocket and took the supplies to the clinic in La Paz, Mexico.
In 2023 Joe returned to La Paz, Mexico with a team of seven Club members to provide support to a medical clinic. Again, he purchased medical supplies with his own funds and donated the supplies to the clinic.
Joe has also served on medical missions with Alliance for Smiles, an organization that provides free surgical repairs for cleft lip and cleft palatein the continents of Asia and Africa.
Joe truly exemplifies the Rotary motto of Service Above Self in everything he does. We at the Rotary Club of Half Moon Bay are honored to have Joe as our valued member. Joe Brennan is most deserving to be recognized as District 5150’s Rotarian of the Month for September 2023!
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
My name is Liz Schuck, and I am the proud 2nd time President of the BEST Rotary Club in the world.
I joined Rotary because of my brother. He was a vice president at a bank and shared with me some of the work of his club. One project stuck in my mind, the goal to end polio. I was very taken by a club that not only supported its local community but was working to end a worldwide disease.
I decided then and there to join such an organization and I did just that in 1995 when I was principal of a large elementary school in Anaheim, California. I felt the connection between the business world and the education world was critical to the success of both! The club I joined was a very small club of 14 members, and I was one of only two women in the club. Our club’s only focus was showing up for the weekly meetings.
In 1999 when I began working for our local school district, Cabrillo Unified, I became a member of the Rotary Club of Half Moon Bay. My friend and dentist Eric Shapira was my sponsor. This is where I learned what Rotary is all about! Very soon after being inducted, I joined a team of club members on an international trip to Mexico to provide wheelchairs for people in need. I guess you would say this was my first “Rotary moment”, or what drove me to want to do more for our community and the world.
Another “Rotary moment” came in 2018 when I joined a team of over 50 people from the Bay Area on an international trip to India to participate in the annual polio immunization program. Which brings me back to my brother and why I joined Rotary. With all of the work of Rotary International and local clubs around the world, we have almost eliminated polio. Going to India was a life changing experience!
And that’s one of the examples of the impact of Rotary worldwide!
Currently one of our many projects locally is building, installing and maintaining little libraries throughout the Coastside. The Rotary Club of Half Moon Bay has been serving the Coastside for more than 50 years. We are actively involved in a number of ongoing community projects as well as planning another trip to Mexico in 2024.
```
Come visit us and see what we’re up to! (To see more about our current projects, just scroll down this page.}
.png)
Half Moon Bay, CA 94019
United States of America