President Randy's MId-Year Recap

Posted by Georganna Hildebrand 
 
 President Randy is half way through his year of service as President of the Scoots Valley Rotary.   He has been very successful in meeting his goal of focusing on youth.  In addition, the Club, under his direction, has continued with our many local and international projects and our membership continues to grow.  Below is a copy of Randy's report to the District.
 
Summary: The Scotts Valley Rotary Club has continued a previously spawned, and cooperative international project (Guatemala) expanded its New Generation’s support of Rotaract, Interact and international youth exchange.

The Rotaract Club at the University of California at Santa Cruz is collaborating with our Scotts Valley High School (SVHS) Interact Club to clarify options for graduating SVHS seniors. Further, our SVHS Interact club has grown in size from 85 students in 2010 to 204 students in 2012. The number of community activities undertaken by these SVHS students, with President Kristen Snell and Interact Area 10 governor Melissa McGee. A summary of their projects include both local Santa Cruz and International (Turkey) projects that are parceled in time by each month of the school year. The Interactors are also collaborating with the local Middle School Interactors to prepare the way for them to become more successful academically and for Interact service in high school.

The Guatemala project is a collaborative effort with all the Area 7 Rotary Clubs and is captained by Georgie Hildebrand. It is an extended 2 year project aimed at improving and sustaining the quality of life of the Guatemalan Mayans.

Our youth exchange student, Lucia Macchi is from Argentina. She came to us at nearly the last possible minute still needing substantial assistance with her English. Rotarian Dennis Culp and his wife are hosting Lu for the first half of her stay with us. Lu has been to several of our Rotary meetings to update us with the progress of her activities. The SVHS has greatly assisted us in Lu’s acclimation to Scotts Valley life.

Our fund raiser this year, Oktoberfest, involved the entire community and businesses in our annual effort to raise funds for both domestic and international projects. We raised about $8000. This was less than we had hoped but was a significant milestone to our community in what all believed are very difficult economic times. Rotarians Patti Malone, Bob and Rob Slawinski provided the location and expertise for us to offer this great event to our community. Every Rotarian worked hard to make this a wonderful event. We will be having two other fund raisers this year to further increase our ability to support both our domestic and international projects.

In the midst of these projects, we continue to support youth at risk (computers, free tutoring, teacher support), support our member’s businesses and organizations (SV Library, Malone’s, Slawinski Auctions, SV Police, Mollies Country Café, Antares Audio, and many others), and to keep an eye toward membership enhancement.