Duplicate post (also on rotaryinvocations.wordpress.com) Tonight my little Rotary Club held our annual auction. With the support of very generous guests, we raised over $37,000 for our projects. We are a small but very active club. Two of our members regularly travel to Africa to a school where we sponsor 200 school lunches, some members sponsor tuition, and we help them with other projects, like a computer lab, and a water tower. One of our members takes a dental team to the mountains of Ecuador. We donate funds to vaccinate 20 children against polio every week. Closer to home we have many community projects. Here is the non-sectarian invocation that I presented tonight:
Margaret Mead said,
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Let us be thankful for the small group of committed people who, with your help tonight, are changing the world
one lunch,
One polio vaccination
One dental filling
One community project at a time.
Let us be thankful for the opportunity to gather together for a good meal with good friends.
Let us be thankful.
Shawn L. Bird 
I think your small group should be openly commended for the wonderful work it is doing to help others. The Margaret Mead quote is very true and should be cited more often. Thank you for this inspiration material.
Thank you. There are some amazing men and women in my Rotary Club.
:O That is sooooo awesome! Congrats!
I know. It was quite astounding. We will be able to do some amazing work with that!
Reblogged this on thisoldtoad.
Shawn — I will use (and credit you) your invocation at this Wednesday’s South Bend Rotary Club meeting (Sep 30):
Nazarene preacher W. T. Purkiser said,
“Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.”
So let us be thankful for our meal, our lives, our friends and our many blessings, and then let us use each to fuel positive change around us.
Thank you!
Beth North
Thanks, Beth. My greetings to South Bend Rotary!
I love your work and I’ve begun using your poems today at our Rotary Club in Glenwood Springs Colorado. And you are given credit.
Thank you, Michael! Greetings to Glenwood Rotary!