Program Reports

Has anyone ever said your grilled ribs or quiche or whatever were out of this world and you ought to open a restaurant—such a good value that Warren Buffet would take his bride for their anniversary.  Or may you—like I do—sometimes dream that your spicy pimento cheese or artichoke relish would be a smash hit at Southern Season or Dean & Deluca’s.  But paying for the construction of a “certified” commercial kitchen in six figures gives you pause?  Or maybe you remember hearing that it was possible to pour more money into a food business than restoring an antebellum house or maintaining a gas guzzling forty foot fishing boat on the coast. (more...)

Danielle Kasper introduced our program presented by Alejandro Sanchez, a native of Colombiawho is the co-founder with Ignacio Torres in the United Statesof Accion Emprendedora  a movement founded  by Mr. Torres inChile. AE is a non-profit organization dedicated to small business development in areas of high social impact through training, technical assistance, and support services.

AE’s focus is on what they call micro-entrepreneurs primarily in the Hispanic community.  Micro, of course, means really really small. Of the approximately 40 thousand Hispanic owned businesses in the state only 11% of them have sales of $1 million and many of them only have one or two employees. (more...)

We were treated to a double feature at Monday’s lunch meeting—the visiting French GSE Team and Otis Lyons, founding director of “Campaign4Change.”

The French GSE team represents Rotary District 1670 in northern France, nestled along the Belgian border.  The most prominent city is Lille whose metropolitan district with more than one million inhabitants is France’s fourth largest.  The surrounding countryside, the Department of the North, played an important role in the industrialization of France.  As mining and textiles declined in the 20^th century, this region reinvented itself with burgeoning commercial, service and education/health related sectors.  Each of the three GSE team members visiting District 7710 is in the health field.  The Triangle obviously offers them rich opportunities to observe the American medical and pharmaceutical professions. (more...)

Everyone understands that Duke was founded and built with tobacco money. While it can reminisce fondly about that historical artifact it has moved far beyond any romantic notions about tobacco’s legacy. I think something similar is happening withNorth Carolina Central University, the other great university inDurham. NCCU’s roots as what is often referred to as an historically Black college are a permanent part of its legacy with its heroes like founder Dr. James Sheppard and Dr. LeRoy Walker, who was honored last year by our club with our annual community service award. But NCCU is becoming so much more than just one antidote to the persistent racial segregation of the last century.

Our meeting on April 16, on the NCCU campus provided lots of evidence of the ambition and achievement that now marks the University.  As its mission states, the university will serve its traditional clientele of African-American students and will also expand its commitment to meet the educational needs of a student body that is diverse in race and other socioeconomic attributes. (more...)

Two past club presidents, Dave Ross and Jim Henderson, reported on a Haiti project that helps bring education, medical treatment and Christianity to one of the poorest and remotest regions in Haiti, itself the poorest country in the Americas.  Dave, a development consultant, previously administered two highly successful capital campaigns at Duke, was club president in 1973-74.  Some people irreverently quipped that Dave still looks pretty young!  Jim, former Business Manager at Duke, served as club president in 1986-87.  They participate in a project (OFCB—Organization of the Christian Force of Bayonnais) that is largely supported by churches in the Charlotte area.

OFCB’s origins begin in the mid-1980s when a woman from Charlotte who was visiting her daughter in Haiti realized the desperate plight of people in remote rural regions.  She befriended a young man, Actionnel Fleurisma, who she subsequently sponsored to study in a Charlotte community college.  After returning home in the mountainous area around Bayonnais, Actionnel founded OFCB and prompted the community to start a school that met in the shade of mango trees.  Since then a proper school—and a satellite school—has been built in which nearly 2,000 students in grades K-13 study.  There are no textbooks.  There is no electricity—except what a solar panel provides the church and guest house—or running water. Students have copybooks in which they write down their lessons.  Blackboards are a piece of masonite.  The absence of what we might regard as necessary supplies does not dampen the enthusiasm for learning.  As Dave and Jim point out, it is not money that makes for good education but desire and commitment.  As was true in this country in the middle of the 1800s, students often walk for miles and hours to reach community-built schoolhouses.  The midday meal provided by the school—sometimes the only hot meal a child might get—consists of rice and beans.  In a nod to modernity, many young people have cell phones seemingly of the flip variety.  (Is there an organization that recycles flip phones when we upgrade to “smart” phones?  I’ll bet Rotary could collect hundreds of thousands, millions of them!) (more...)

As my old pappy used to say “Sometimes good things happen because somebody saw an opportunity to make some money.” I hope that School House Apparel will prove  him correct because it certainly has been built on a couple of big audacious altruistic ideas. According to Rachel Weeks the founder and guiding light of School House Apparel that day of profitability may be near at hand.

Ms. Weeks was a Greensboro girl who came to Duke with an interest in fashion and concern for exploited workers in the third world sweat shops which produce much of the world’s clothing.

She managed to obtain a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Sri Lanka, a small country 10,000 miles away which was trying to brand itself as a source of clothing that was produced ethically. To make a long story short, Ms. Weeks founded School House and launched a factory in Sri Lankathat paid almost triple the prevailing wage to its workers.

Perversely perhaps, the success of the latter negatively impacted School House. The factory attracted the attention and business of much larger companies like Nike who made it difficult for them to meet the needs of a small customer like School House. This and the fact that the logistics of dealing with a supplier so far away led to the second big School House Apparel idea; revive the American clothing industry.

Everyone knows that there used to be hundreds of small knitting and cut and sew operations scattered throughout North Carolina. School House went on a search among the few that are left and found a partner in Mitt’s Nitts right here in Durham who would work closely with them to produce and source materials right here in North Carolina including zippers in Oxford, fabrics in Greensboro and screen printing in Rocky Mount. In their words, they are creating a greener, homegrown supply chain and providing a model for reviving clothing manufacturing here on the east coast. (more...)

The Council for Entrepreneurial Development serves as a networking and mentoring non-profit organization that fosters the entrepreneurial culture of the Research Triangle andNorth Carolina. Founded inDurhamin 1984 CED is the largest entrepreneurial support group in the Southeast and the oldest such network in the country.  It has helped entrepreneurs raise more than a billion dollars in capital, launched more than 700 companies, and serves more than 5,500 members in more than a 1000 companies.  Its principal donors include banks, law firms, real estate companies, technology and biomedical and consumer products companies among others.  Area universities and RTP play a major role in CED activities.

Joan Siefert Rose, president of CED for the past three years, gave us a fascinating and informative overview of the mission and activities of CED.  She admits that she is a “low tech person in a high tech world.”  With a B.A. from decidedly liberal arts Middlebury College and a master’s degree from Michigan, Joan’s previous professional career was  mainly in public radio—Michigan NPR and, more recently, seven years as general manager of WUNC.  Anticipating the question of how someone with her background in radio would wind up cultivating entrepreneurial networks, she humorously commented that some of their mentees just needed a little “adult supervision.”  On a more serious note, she noted that it is one thing for entrepreneurial aspirants to have creative, practical ideas, designs and prototypes.  Building a product that has a market and potential for profit results in real entrepreneurial success.  The mission of CED is to help grow good ideas into businesses. (more...)

We have had so many great programs over the last few years I wonder whether we will ever run out of great topics.  On top of that we also have a large number of the most knowledgeable and interesting people in the community in the club and we seldom tap them for programs. Sometimes we just take what we have for granted.

In spite of that, the program on March 12^th brought us two members who put together a program on creative charitable giving to pinch hit for another member, Dave Ross who was originally scheduled to present an opportunity to help start a Rotary Club in a devastated area ofHaiti. Dave had to be out of town.

Neither Bill Stokes nor George Deaton need much introduction but for newer members, Bill is a financial advisor with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (http://fa.smithbarney.com/stokes/) with a couple of degrees from Duke. He’s also aDurham native with a long list of community activities. Bill described how certain individuals with traditional IRA accounts could make charitable contributions directly from their IRA account excluding the contributions from gross income and simultaneously satisfying distribution requirements. You’ll find the total explanation on Bill’s webpage by clicking through the link in the sidebar entitled “White Papers.” The two page summary is the last one on the list. (more...)

With March Madness upon us and with the ACC Basketball Tournament getting underway in downtown Atlanta’s Phillips Arena on March 8^th, the club heard from arguably the most respected local sports journalist and analyst Barry Jacobs.

Barry’s career as a journalist spans thirty six years.  Born in New York, he graduated from Duke and settled in the Triangle area.  His columns have appeared in major national newspapers and local news outlets and he contributes regularly to the online ACC Sports Journal (ACCSports.com).  Barry is a prolific author of roundball books.  To name a few: Golden Glory: First Fifty Years of the ACC;  Across the Line: Tales of the First Black Players in the ACC; Coach K’s Little Blue Book (co-authored with Coach K); Three Paths to Glory: A Season on the Hardwood with Duke, N.C. State and North Carolina; and The World According to Dean.  His level-headed, informed and honest analysis makes him a highly sought after commentator on ACC sports.

In addition to his career as journalist and author, Barry spends many hours in public service.  As a member of the Orange County Commission since 1998, Barry is a strong proponent of a Triangle light rail system and environmental protection.  Another interest is historic preservation.  He and his wife Robin, the executive director of the Eno River Foundation, are active in preserving Moorefields, a 1785 home in Orange County that is on the National Register of Historic Places and whose surrounding land is maintained as a wildlife preserve. (more...)

The last time we heard from John Guss was when he addressed the Club at the re-dedication of the Rotary Bandstand at Bennett Placeduring President Sam Miglarese’s term two years ago. Sam, who is now on the board of Bennett Place introduced John, a man trained in marketing but very interested in history and who built something of a career in films based on his interest in the Civil War as a reenactor.

Even though Mr. Guss joked about having to begin to grow a beard for an upcoming portrayal of William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union General who wreaked havoc throughout the south during the war, this presentation had a more somber tone than the celebration two years ago.

Bennett Place is one of three state historical sites inDurhamand is important because it was the site of the largest surrender of the war. The others are the Stagville Plantation and the Duke Homestead. Mr. Guss related that besides preparing to play Sherman, he was also preparing for a meeting the following day to discuss the fate of the three sites under the pressure of the State’s ongoing budget crisis. One of the cuts under discussion is to place the management of the sites under one manager and letting two go…at no additional salary, of course. (more...)