Rotary president weighs in
for three million pounds of help

It took Bob Bashara three years to reach the presidency of the Grosse Pointe Rotary Club, and when he arrived in the office, he faced a decision.

“About a year and a half ago, I asked myself 'What do I want to do?’ because presidents can choose a project in the club,” Bashara said. “I saw all these different clubs doing different services and decided to have one large project that all clubs can take advantage of.”

"Large" may be putting it mildly. Bashara initiated the Three Million Pound Challenge, to gather a million pounds each of food, clothing and books for the needy in Detroit.

“While helping Haiti and Africa and these other places is wonderful and a great thing, we have our own issues right in our backyard,” Bashara said. “We got our District Governor Neil McBeth’s blessing on the project, but he told us we’re going to have to run the project.

“I said ‘No problem, Grosse Pointe will take the lead.’”

The Grosse Pointe Rotary Club is teaming up with groups like Red Cross, Crossroads of Michigan and Matrix Human Services, which help poor people in Detroit.

“Rotary just doesn’t have the infrastructure that these groups do, and with their help, we can reach our goal and reach to the community,” Bashara said. “From July 1 until now, we’re at a total of 850,000 pounds. With only five months to go, we’re about one third of the way there.”

Other groups like Interact, which is the high school version of Rotary, are participating in the effort.

“My daughter happens to be the secretary of the Interact club at Grosse Pointe South,” Bashara said.

Many people have already started to benefit from the challenge. For instance, the Oakland International Academy has 330 children where 98% of families are below the poverty level. The school had only about 50 books for the children.

“They wanted to know if the Three Million Pound Challenge could help them,” Bashara said. “The first delivery we sent was a total of 4,000 books, and the director broke down in tears. Our next delivery was 8,000 more books, and now they have a full library for both children and parents.”

To help boost the effort, Bashara set up booths at the Motown Winter Blast at Campus Martius.

“It was amazing,” Bashara said. “We had 150 volunteers from clubs across the district, working five tents of access into the Winter Blast areas. We collected food, books and clothing in excess of 425,000 pounds and over 100,000 people attended the three-day event.

“The most memorable time was watching the boxes fill up and the sheer amount of items we collected,” he said.

“We have set up a processing center at the Children’s Home of Detroit on Cook Road in the Barnard Center where anyone can drop off donations to the Three Million Pound Challenge,” Bashara said. “We also have two other processing centers in Northville and Wyandotte, but they’re not doing as much as Grosse Pointe since we’re the ones running this.”

Donations to the challenge can be dropped off at the processing centers on Wednesdays from 7 to 9 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon.

“I absolutely think this could become an annual event,” Bashara said. “We’ve been bringing in boxes of food, books and clothing to Matrix faster than they can send it out, and we’ve actually been told to slow down a bit. They didn’t know it would be this successful."

Like other Rotaries, the Grosse Pointe Rotary Club promotes world peace, and it is one of 51 Rotary clubs in the Southwestern Ontario and Southeastern Michigan District. Grosse Pointe Rotary alone has donated thousands of dollars to local schools, homeless people and libraries, and has contributed to international efforts such as eliminating polio from Africa.

“Rotary is a great organization whose core belief and value is service above self,” Bashara said. “We raise approximately $40-50,000 a year and give it all away.”

Bashara has been a member for 21 years, with 19 years of perfect attendance. He grew up attending Grosse Pointe schools, which is where his son went to school and where his daughter still attends. Bashara went to Albion College and returned to the Pointes. He owns and manages rental properties.

“The Rotary Club asked me years ago to get onto the leadership train and I always said ‘My kids are young, I’m going to wait until my kids are older,’” he said. “Three years ago I said I was ready, and it has worked out very well now that my son is in college and my daughter is graduating from South this year.”
 

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