Roger introduced our guest speaker for Jan. 24, 2011, Pedro Gonzales from Cementation. Pedro Gonzales is well aware that his appearance and accent (or lack thereof) don't fit the profile of his name, as he humorously pointed out at the start of his presentation. Pedro has a very “average” complexion, shaved head and little to no accent in contrast with his name. He started his talk by breaking the ice and saying that he knew we were all expecting a long-haired, dark tanned Mexican appearing fellow and apologized for confusing anyone. He received a good laugh from the membership. He explained that his grandfather was from Madrid, Spain, but Pedro was born and raised in Ontario...
Pedro started his career in mining in Ontario and later found himself in Chile as the VP of Cementation. Cementation is an international publicly-traded company operated out of South Africa with branches in other countries around the world. Cementationdesigns and builds mines. Pedro and his family lived in Chile as Chile is the largest copper selling country in the world. After the massive earthquake in Chile, he decided that they would move back to Canada. Because Cementation didn’t have a VP position in Ontario, they asked him if he would like to live in Sussex, and he has been here for eight months now.
While in Chile, he helped employees of Cementation after the earthquake by raising over $75,000. The employees received $30,000, and the other $45,000 went to the community and local fisherman. This went a long way in their community. He wanted to do the same thing here. He looked for a food bank in our area, and when he could not find one, he looked for something similar and found the Sussex Sharing Club and thought a food drive would be a great start.
The goal was to raise one ton of food for the club. Still, the club’s building could not accommodate all that food. Fortunately, through the efforts and connections of Rotarians, Bob Kimball opened the doors to Pearson’s to store any overstock that they needed. Although they thought they had an ambitious goal of one ton of food, they ended up getting 2.4 tons and over $10,000. All this accomplished by a group of fewer than 25 people. The Sussex Sharing Club helps out over 100 families every week, so this is a benefit to our community. When they arrived at the sharing club, they were welcomed with great enthusiasm as the club had been having difficulty just getting basics such as hydro paid for as of late.
The funds and donations were raised by Cementation $1,000, suppliers $2,000 and the rest was from employees coming and going from the mines.
April Caissie thanked Pedro for coming in.