9×90 Episode 16

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The Free Gift

Ladies & Gents,

Here is the playbook that we discuss in this video decided to share with all of our listeners:

The Transcript

Adi Soozin: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the 9×90 show. Usually we feature the most incredible startup founders from around the world. Today we’re going to switch things up and I am actually going to introduce you to someone that I consider a personal mentor and coach of mine. We have the same knee injury. So I think that was like, the foundation of our friendship was. You don’t have any ligaments in your knee either. We should be best friends. So, a lot of our calls start with, How are you surviving the hurricane? I was your knee. Have you tried this pain management thing but he is absolutely an amazing guy. You guys are going to just love getting to know him over the next few minutes. What we’re going to do and the reason he’s on the show is actually, he has done some remarkable things in the philanthropic world.

Adi Soozin: For those of you who do not know, most of you do, but my family has been in rotary since 1958. There are a lot of the plaques so we love working Rotarians around the world, who are bringing changing technology to remote villages. They’re bringing economic empowerment projects to different places around the world. There’s such a catalyst for society, moving forward in a positive direction. Very rarely, Do we get Rotarians onto a show like this but Coach Dan Rizzi is here and he’s making it happen for you guys, which is amazing because his ear is so busy, and so packed with all the amazing projects they’re doing this year. So there you go. And you want to tell them a little bit about yourself.

President Dan Rizzi: Good morning. My name is Dan Rizzi. I’ve been around South Florida since 1965. I’ve been returning for the past eight years. I’ve been involved with service work since Probably in the 1970s with coaching the Optimus Club and Miramar and going through that to get on the board. 14 years later I became a Masonic master and Daniel Beach Lodge. And now with the Rotarians service work is important to me. Giving back is what I was always taught to do and that’s what I try to do every day of my life.

Adi Soozin: It’s so right now you’re leading one of the biggest clubs in this area. How many members do you have, about 100, right?

President Dan Rizzi: We have 105. We just picked up five new members through the pandemic, we lost A lot of those people who entered in the pandemic, moved away or passed away. So we lost a bunch of people. We were probably up to coming into Club 170 but over the years attrition is taking its toll and we’re still 105 members right now and we’re growing again. Like I said, we just put five numbers on. They just went through what we call the Blue Badge and now they’re doing a lot of work this year. They really stepped up to the plate, as brand new people. As they enjoy what we do.

Adi Soozin: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve had a few of them, send me flyers Hey could you just proof break This really quick? Tell me what you would change here. How do I phrase it? But I’m excited to see people passionate about learning how to step into, and grow into the roles. Those of me, I know that. I’m very passionate about training the next generation of leaders and you have some amazing emerging leaders at your club. So, you have a few different, pretty cool projects going on right now. Do you want to talk about what some of those are?

President Dan Rizzi: Yeah, we have quite a few projects, of course we’re helping with hurricane relief, which we’re doing through our district and trying to help the people Western Florida and also in the Carolinas because Rotary is an international club. I believe we have 23,000 clubs nationwide and probably close to 3,000 members. And at this point we have some projects going on some of the projects that we have. Right now what we’re doing is a general project like helping Broward Foundation, Educational Foundation which is collecting school supplies. Hispanic unity building vegetable gardens for the kids. So they learn how to grow their own vegetables and be able to sit there and survive. Jacob’s Just collecting sneakers or shoes that are still worthy to wear just cleaning them up and giving you to the needy.

President Dan Rizzi: Our toy drive every year for many. Many years we’ve usually collected over 500 toys easily and…

Adi Soozin: The toy drive is so fun.

President Dan Rizzi: We distributed an attempt to five different areas and Stroke center, which is for children’s diagnostic, treatment center, healthy, mothers, and healthy babies.

Adi Soozin: Let’s pause for a second. Let’s pause. So let’s just tell people about what you’re doing with the toy drive.

President Dan Rizzi: We basically take these toys to these children that are kind of needy, they’re not saying And basically just give you something to lift their life during the holidays, these kids don’t get…

Adi Soozin: Yeah.

President Dan Rizzi: what we give our kids because we’re lucky enough to be able to do that. And our goal is to help them enjoy life. A little bit with a toy here or a bite and even the elderly we help, we take stuff to the elderly, the biggest thing you ever love. These are stuffed animals. Because it’s amazing what, they hug them And it’s amazing the little things and those little things do so much for certain people and…

Adi Soozin: Yes.

President Dan Rizzi: It’s amazing to watch their faces. And see them smile.

Adi Soozin: So, for those of you who are tuning in from Europe, I know that there are a lot of government programs that are in charge of taking care of those on the outskirts of society. We do not have these similar things in the US and that’s where rotary comes in and kind of fills the gap and takes care of those who are on the outskirts of society. And in certain parts of the world, you have different gift giving festivals at different times of year. What Dan roses were just discussing right now with the holidays, our gift giving season in the US is in December it overlooks lots of Christmas times. So, there’s a lot of marketing material videos that these children see where they see kids opening gifts and they’re not going to get something. So they feel even more like they’re on the outskirts of society. So that’s where this rotary club just comes in and bridges that gap and makes them feel like they’re worthy because they’re these young children.

Adi Soozin: They’re seeing other people swapping gifts having this joyous time and this club was in and helps those on the outskirts of this local community to feel included as but something that’s very fun that they do with it’s a prestigious club, So they have architects, they have what that head of one of the local hospitals is a member there.

President Dan Rizzi: Correct.

Adi Soozin: One of the most prestigious hotels. They have very prestigious top-notch professionals there and they will take turns dressing up. The Santa Claus to walk around the meeting and joke with everyone to get them to participate in the toy drive but then You do something at Thanksgiving as well. Again, coming into the outskirts of society bringing them in.

President Dan Rizzi: We partner with the Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale and…

Adi Soozin: What is it?

President Dan Rizzi: With also a donation to help them buy the turkeys, they buy the turkeys, and we go over there, and we actually pack the turkeys, with all the fixings. They get everything for dinner. And usually it’s a 12 pound turkey, which is a good turkey first for an average family. We pack it up. And this was servicing about 700 families that need this little boost again, it’s just giving up a little understanding that people care. Absolutely people.

Adi Soozin: Yeah, this is again, every country has their own feast at some point throughout the year,…

President Dan Rizzi: Correct.

Adi Soozin: every single country has some sort of festival, where everyone participates in some sort of feast, so be it to coat.

President Dan Rizzi: Correct.

Adi Soozin: What is Diwali? That there’s different holidays in every country around the world where people get together and they celebrate the harvest of the local crops, which was a huge deal hundreds of years ago, when your food cycles depended on a harvest and today, it’s just an amazing tradition. So once again, this Rotary club comes in with Some very powerful people in their club and they put together meals for 700 different families in this local area so that they can participate in another amazing holiday.

President Dan Rizzi: Again, this is a conjunction or partnership with a major Presbyterian church in Fort Lauderdale that does amazing work in the community with themselves.

Adi Soozin: Yes, and then the next thing on your list was the medical equipment for children.

President Dan Rizzi: Medical equipment. What do we have? There’s a couple of different things that we do right now, what we’re doing is we’re working on, it’s a fundraiser. And what we did was come up with our president last year. Another member of our club came up with the idea to Try to put a bus on the streets. And what the bus is for is to pick up the homeless and…

Adi Soozin: Yes.

President Dan Rizzi: take them to 20 different facilities. To Get help. Whether it’s medical, whether it’s trying to get a license, whether it’s trying to get even an ID so they can go around and maybe get a job, getting them off the streets and helping them get off the drugs, the alcohol. Helping families, get off the streets and maybe find an apartment. These are things we’re doing without but they can’t get to point B. They came in to afford a bus pass.

President Dan Rizzi: So what are projects is trying to put a bus on the streets and it’s been about a year, but we’ve actually come close to getting it done. We actually have a partner now that pledges to give us $20,000, that’s Florida Blue. We also have.

President Dan Rizzi: Fellowship recovery, which is Rick’s. organization named just they don’t have 15,000 and we have some other ones coming up that they’ve said they’re going to give us the money but haven’t Set upside. This is what we’re doing. So we pretty much will be bringing up and they’re getting together 70,000 projects so we can put this bus on the street and it’s going to be manned and everybody that comes on the bus is going to sit there and have to talk to the person on the bus and say, Why are you here? Who do you get, documentation, who they are? And then what are your needs? So we can tell. Okay. This is a stop. You have to get off at

President Dan Rizzi: Because they don’t know and it’s 20 stops. I’m gonna make two to three rounds every day and we have Florida blues. The city’s excited about it and hopefully we can sit there and put this together and take it to the state to get the funding for the rest of the year and years to come. That’s our goal.

Adi Soozin: So for those of you who have been to cities where you see homelessness and you’re like, my God, the homeless shelters aren’t working. That’s right. Putting a roof over someone’s Only gets them so far. So what this Rotary Club has done and they’ve been able to do because they have some brilliant economists in there. Who understands societal structures, they have come up with a very specific plan of What are the steps that someone who is homeless drug addict on the streets? What steps do they need to take to become a functioning member of society again? And then they built a bus route around that

Adi Soozin: So, just to wrap your heads around it, I don’t know. Some of you may have heard of New York City relief that was founded by one of my father’s friends in New York City where they do something similar, they bring a bus to different areas that have a high homeless population twice a week. Every single week, they give them a hot meal. And then as soon as they’re ready to fill out job applications and get off the streets, they come on the bus and they have someone sitting there with them, helping them to get plugged back into society and become a functioning member of society. Sitting there and giving things to the homeless. It only gets them so far, giving them the tools they need and economically empowering them to get off the streets. Is a total game changer and it’s a long-term sustainable solution. If any of you are interested in donating to this, you can reach out to me and I will connect you with Dan Rizzi. I believe that naming rights are still available for the bus. If they write a check, they can have their logo printed on the side of the bus. Correct.

President Dan Rizzi: I believe so, we have to see how far and what kind of room, but we will try to accommodate anybody that wants to donate to this and make this thing work because I think it’s an important factor. Because right now there’s another function of this that we started with the city and what it is is we open up libraries twice a month and we have coffee and candy can stuff like that and we invite the homeless to come in. And what they do is, they’ll let us know what their needs are and some of them get bus passes. So they can go to a medical facility or they can go get rehab.

President Dan Rizzi: They’ve got a rich facility, which is fellowship recovery and there’s been several of them that have recovered sub rooms already working in and get jobs and have their own places and it’s amazing in the years time, 12 to 15, I’ll walk the streets and have recovered. And that’s an amazing figure when you look at how long it takes to have somebody recover and get back to normal. So it’s not something that happens overnight. That’s part of the programs that we’re putting together homelessness right now.

Adi Soozin: and then,

President Dan Rizzi: On the street, remember, Florida has a law. Now that you’re not supposed to sleep on the streets anymore. So where do people go? And that’s the goal of a lot of organizations in this area including life. We just had her speaker, the CEO of this week at our club, to talk about what’s going on and they don’t know where to put them. That’s the problem.

President Dan Rizzi: So it’s a…

Adi Soozin: Yeah.

President Dan Rizzi: It’s one of the starting factors of putting this together and there’s a lot of caring people that are really pushing this and behind

Adi Soozin: And then you’re doing a lot for women and children’s health.

President Dan Rizzi: Yes. I guess how do I want to put that?

President Dan Rizzi: We try to sit there and back. Anybody that comes in and says Okay, where did we’re in organization, but we need XYZ, because we’re lacking diapers, we’re lacking, anything of that nature. We need clothes and when they come to us, we try to sit there and accommodate them the best we can with clothing drives. And that’s something that really helps us because there’ve been in the past where they wanted business suits because they were taking these people out dressing them up and putting them in front of somebody to get a job because they don’t have clothes, they can’t go out and get a job,…

Adi Soozin: My neighbors,…

President Dan Rizzi: whether it’s a mayor or…

Adi Soozin: and I donated to that,…

President Dan Rizzi: a woman,

Adi Soozin: I’m in a wealthy Jewish neighborhood and I told everyone Hey, we need suits for young people. Boom, I did not expect to have so much professional attire at my front door, but yeah.

President Dan Rizzi: It’s very important to get them and they feel better when they dress up like that and try to go to enjoy, somebody says I can do this job. And try to find some way to make a living. So that’s part of what we try to do in that respect. and that’s in conjunction with the city to City, Florida has been an amazing partner in a lot of the stuff we have. Georgia Risker is one of our long line members who’s worked with the city and works with this type of program. So he’ll let us know what they need and grow trying to help them as much as we can.

Adi Soozin: Yes.

President Dan Rizzi: There’s a bunch of other projects too. We have another project that we’re working on. It’s called Lucky Horse. It’s a farm that has comfort animals to help people with disabilities. They can come to the farm. Or they can take the animals to a site. So these keys people with disabilities get to play with them and pet them and it kind of calms them down and so the doctors can work with them a lot easier. In fact, the owner of this is a doctor that does psychology and works with these types of things. It’s men, women, and children. It doesn’t matter. They all come.

Adi Soozin: She’s not just a doctor, she went to Harvard. So she’s among the most brilliant and brightest women you’ll ever meet. And she looks like she just walked off the cover of a Vogue magazine, she’s beautiful. She’s brilliant. Yeah.

President Dan Rizzi: And basically what we did this year, they needed a lot of work on the fences around there and through a contact of mine. Which happens to be Home Depot, because Home Depot works In another project, I’ll talk to you about in a minute. They came out several times and they were awarded a grandpa $25,000 for materials. And not only that they’re bringing out their staff to help put and fix the fences. And it’s going to be one of our projects to go out there and help with them as a service project, from our Rotary club and any rotary club that wants to come out. So, that’s one of the things that we’ve accomplished this year and it’s amazing because Getting grants from big corporations is not easy.

Adi Soozin: No, not at all.

President Dan Rizzi: and again it’s not just one it’s actually a stores in dating and Palm Beach County is 15 stores that came together and put grants in their stores out for the same thing and it added up to 25,000

Adi Soozin: Yes, that’s just incredible being able to have a valuable resource like that coming to help with things that a brilliant doctor would not be expected to know. It would be sad to lose the efficacy of her projects just because she didn’t have that resource. So again bridging the gap filling in the needs of those helping society to continue to run smoothly helping to get certain People within society back into the cold to become intelligent contributing members, it’s really incredible. What you guys are doing. Are there any other projects you wanted to discuss?

President Dan Rizzi: But one of the biggest ones that we do every year, we’ve been doing it for over 30 years, is called Challenge Air. We partnered with Challenge Air, which is an organization that does this throughout the United States. It’s a project where we take special needs children and introduce them to flight. Somebody’s children. never would ever go up in a plane. Never would have that opportunity to feel what flights are all about. So bless this past year. We put 84 children up in conjunction with 19 pilots that donated their planes and their fuel, And they did this. Every year they come back every year because they love looking at these kids on the planes and getting off the planes with smiles, that you really see a child of that type of situation smile.

President Dan Rizzi: We also have people that come in and sponsor carrabba’s. One of them, they give us 250 people, every single year sugar snaps, which is that small organization. But the kids of this organization, the parents, have two daughters that come out every year and it helps with Taking cupcakes. And letting the kids decorate cupcakes and cookies. It’s amazing Home Depot comes out and puts a table out and Brings all the stuff to sit there like build a plane or something else and the kids sit there and put it together, the hammer together with their parents and painting. And it’s amazing to see what they do. somebody comes out in donations. They have simulators the kids can get in front with help and see what the plane.

President Dan Rizzi: And it goes on and on? It’s just an amazing event. Last year we had 160 volunteers, just the volunteers to help us run this event. It’s a big event and thanks to our major partner, which is bangion air, which donates a major hanger every year, and their staff because their staff runs they’re out. Taking pictures of the planes coming in and out in time and there’s no issues. We all work with the Tower. And so it’s a big operation and we just started the operation last week with our first meeting. So This is three months before I work on this to get it done. It’s just amazing and anybody wants to come And visit and see what it’s all about. You’ll be off about these kids and their smiles, we have kids come back every year. We have one kid. His name is Malachite.

President Dan Rizzi: He’s gonna be 22 this year. I’m sure. But he kind of timed out, but he started coming at five years. An amazing gentleman, an amazing fit. And we actually Were able to get him up last year after everybody left, and one of the policies, Let’s go, I’ll take you up. So he actually went up again this year. He’s an amazing kid, his mother’s amazing, and she says, As long as you happen here, we’ll come and stop by and say hello. So this is what we get back. The love from people that need a little bit of love themselves.

President Dan Rizzi: That’s what?

Adi Soozin: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s just another amazing example of how Rotary finds unique ways to solve societal problems, for, There’s an increasing number of children coming out with autism and people are so quick to disregard them.

Adi Soozin: And they’re brilliant at math, they’re brilliant at art, they’re brilliant at specific things. And when you find people who will take that time to sit down with them and figure out what their brilliant at and help them to cultivate those skills. They take off, they can be remarkable professionals. And here rotary comes in with this amazing project and…

President Dan Rizzi: Okay.

Adi Soozin: shows them look like this might have been scary, but look at how amazing it is and just helps their brain to understand that there’s certain ways that they can be exposed to new experiences. And it doesn’t have to be terrible and traumatizing and it primes them to go out and try other new things. So they can have the opportunity to and the desire and the motivation to go out and try new things. Until they find what they’re super power is and they’re able to become a contributing member of society rather than just being another outcast.

President Dan Rizzi: One of the other parties, basically the city of Fort Lauderdale is amazing because they bring out The horses, the motorcycles, and the kids love that. And that’s another part of How the kids get joy and that’s what it’s all about. Because they’re able to go out and pet the dogs. They’re able to sit there and pet the horses and it’s just a great event. And I’ve enjoyed the sense that the desk started going there and I’m gonna be one of the coordinators. It also does some fun things too. We just had to run it back up. Pick a yearly picnic and we had a ball. It was a nice place. We had it on the beach, it was a beautiful day, it was windy Breezy, so it wasn’t hot. And, we try to sit there and do fun things too.

Adi Soozin: No, You have The best induction I’ve ever been to.

President Dan Rizzi: That’s coming up.

Adi Soozin: Okay, so yeah, I’m in my mid 30s but because of the family I was born into I attended my first formal rotary event when I was one and it was featured in a newspaper. So I have gone to way too many formal rotary events throughout my life. I remember when I was a child, I didn’t realize it wasn’t normal to go to a different black tie dinner every single night in December. So I just knew every year in December, as a family. and we had to go to all these black high events for all the different rotary clubs in the area, all the different charities in the area, but they were fun. But then you go to the Fort Lauderdale Holiday party and my God, the venue is stunning.

President Dan Rizzi: This year, we’re having that at Heiko’s Place, which is an amazing hotel, it’s a Four Star Hotel.

Adi Soozin: I love it. Yeah.

President Dan Rizzi: And we’re gonna have a fun time because we’re bringing in the ugly sweater we’re bringing in. But karaoke in this couple other things because the first hour so that’s what we want to do. And

President Dan Rizzi: So, these are things instead of having to address them. Stuff. We want to have a fun affair on this year’s menu. So it’s going to be a nice affair. It’s going to come and it’s coming up on the first of December.

Adi Soozin: And you all know Hiko, you’ve met him before he came on. He is the executive vice president of Las Olas company. The one I joke about is like my older German brother. He always wears very fun clothes. One time I had to go to this event and I was asked to sit next to the gentleman. It was assigned seating. I had to sit next to this gentleman who managed 48 billion in assets and I was shaking. I was like, terrified. I called Heiko for my pep talk. I go. What should I do? And he’s like a deep, you’re fine, you’ve got this, you do you do this. He gave me the pep talk, so I was ready to go. He’s like that cool older brother in the superhero in the movies where they have that advisor, they go to, that’s how it goes. Another one of those people. So I’m glad that you’re doing the event with him. He’s just

President Dan Rizzi: Yeah. We have two members that run hotels and we try to split between them every year. There’s a lot of things that we do this year. We did something different. At one of our lunches, We had rosarians honor returns, which basically brought back. Some older people are still in, but still members, but they don’t come. We had 160 people show up at a luncheon.

President Dan Rizzi: And it was amazing because it honored some of the people that have done a lot in society to help people, one of them was a doctor, he’s an amazing person. He actually still goes back to honor and help his people in Turkey. There were four people, honestly this year and then we just recently did something for Broward health. Maddie is a member. He’s the CEO of Broward Health Care Medical Center and he actually put on a dinner for us because it was an event to honor members who have Over with the oldest one being there, 15 years in our club, so this is a little bit of the Funnest a little bit nicer things that we do and had to try to have fun and be also honor the people that service our communities.

President Dan Rizzi: Remember we’re a club of service above cell and that’s the key to what we do and that’s what we work. We work towards

Adi Soozin: So some of this playbook came out this week. It’s a project that Sarah Wagner and I worked on for Rotary international president Dr. Stephanie Urchick. Yes, she’s so cool, she got her PhD. Anyways, we came out with this Playbook. How to make your Rotary Club, District or Region, an epicenter of society. So if you’re listening to what Dan is talking about, you’re like, my God, I don’t even know where to begin. This is a great place to start. It will not bring you to his level by in five minutes, it does take time to get to be the type of crux in society, that Dan is, but this is a great place to start because it helps you to connect with the types of

Adi Soozin: Brilliant professionals, who help your club to become an epicenter in society and to become a place that is a catalyst for change and drives your local society in a positive direction. So if you’re someone who’s been sitting there saying, How do I get my club to dance? You can text maybe? Can they call me and…

President Dan Rizzi: Yes.

Adi Soozin: will ask if it’s okay. I will be the gatekeeper and maybe give you his phone number.

President Dan Rizzi: But not a problem. I’m there to help.

Adi Soozin: But if you need this playbook, I will add the link to where you can download your own copy in the notes. You can then ask Dan questions about how to get on his level. Dan, thank you so much for your time and everything. Is there anything else you wanted to say?

President Dan Rizzi: No, just thank you for taking your time to put this together because I believe it’s going to be amazing to throw people to What experiences we’ve had together in my life. So thank you.

Adi Soozin: Absolutely. Yeah, some of I go to Dan for advice, what I’m like, what do I do next? Having people like Dan Rosie and other Rotarians in your black book be able to call on for guidance and advice and your professional career is an absolute game changer. So if you’re in your 20s 30s 40s and you’re like Look I am at the top of my game. I’ve no one to look up to. I feel lost. Join a rotary to find people, like Dan calls them? Yeah, I’ll go on an international speaking tour. I’ll get more stalkers and then I call someone like Dad and they’re like, it’s okay kid, you got this and that just, it changes your life. So, not only does joining Rotary help to help you to change society. It also changes you along the way. Anyways. Alright thanks coach,…

President Dan Rizzi: Correct. Thank you.

Adi Soozin: I’ll see you back online.

President Dan Rizzi: Thank you.

Adi Soozin: Take care. Bye.

This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created.

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