Carmi Rotary Club Learns About CEO
The Carmi Rotary club met on a frosty cold Thursday to hear about the CEO program at the Carmi-White County High School.
On hand for the presentation was the school sponsor, Tracy Orr and the club’s CEO, Gaetano DiMaggio.
Tracy began the program explaining that CEO stands for: Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities, and was actually started by a high school student in Fairfield. The club is now on fire, especially in the state of Illinois.
The idea behind the CEO program is to stop the “brain drain”. Meaning, the club is here to encourage local students to return to the small towns they came from after they go off to college.
The program started in Carmi in 2017, and there have now been 32 students transition through. It is a county-wide program, featuring students from Carmi-White County and Norris City-Omaha-Enfield.
The club meets every day from 7:30am until 9:00, and they rotate their meeting sites. This year they have met at Butch’s CPA office and at Banterra Bank in Norris City.
They have strict rules about being on time, and about the dress code. No jeans, sandals, or other such attire is allowed. Students must dress in business attire to be part of the program. Tracy noted that the transformation can be amazing, seeing students’ attitudes improve just from dressing in a more professional manner.
At the beginning of the school year, the club spends time visiting with local businesses or having local business leaders come in for meetings. Next up, they do a round of “speed dating” where local business leaders spend three minutes with each student. After the event is over, the students are matched up with a mentor who will help them for the rest of the school year.
Next up on the agenda, the entire club works together to create a class business. This forces them to work as a team, even though there are many, many different styles within the class. As a group, the have to create a business, market that idea, and finally, put on an event that features that business.
This year’s class has created a board game called, “White County-Opoly”. The game is a take-off on the classic Monopoly game, except it features local businesses in place of the famous street names in the original game. This game ties in with the club’s theme for the year, “Shop Locally.”
This year’s event will be held on February 9th at the floral hall at the White County Fairgrounds. Tickets are $25 per person, and features a dinner, a round of White County-Opoly, and a silent auction featuring products from local companies.
Gaetano explained that the creation of the game was a learning experience for the whole team. They used an on-line company that specializes in board games. The process involved the CEO program creating a template for the game, and the on-line company making and packaging them. It was at that point in the process that they realized the company was in Hong Kong, and the shipping was going to be a whopping three hundred dollars!
For the end of the school year, each member of the CEO program will create their own business. To do so they must write a business plan, and that plan will be presented to a group of local bankers. While these businesses are sometimes works on paper, some have actually been kept active even after the student goes to college. Tracy told of Emmy Pruitt, who started her business “Sew Blessed” while she was part of the CEO program, and is now running it as a college student at SIC.
In Rotary business, the date of February 19th has been chosen for the first “Get to know Rotary” dinner. This event will be held at the Elks club in Carmi. More details will be out soon on this event.
The date of Saturday, March 9th was locked up as the date for the next Rotary Trivia night. The trivia night will be held at the American Legion in Carmi. Much more information to follow on this very popular event.
Tom Logan won the 50/50 drawing and managed to claim the cash prize for the day. Cindy Conley was named the day’s Phantom.
The Carmi Rotary club meets every Thursday at noon at the First United Methodist Church on Main Street in Carmi. Anyone wishing to learn more about this civic organization is welcome to attend a meeting or speak with any Carmi Rotarian.
