Oro Valley AZ Rotary - Club Events & Projects

Citizen of the Year

This event is the Club’s major fund-raising event of the year, and it enables the support of several community activities. This past year, the event enabled donations to the Catalina Food Bank, recognition and scholarships for Oro Valley high school students, sponsorships of two high school Interact Clubs and the Four-Way Test speech contest. The club donates books to the Oro Valley Library, dictionaries to local elementary schools. We also support the Rotary Vocational Fund of Arizona, which provides assistance to the working poor to improve their skills.

Focus on Youth

Oro Valley Rotary places emphasis on youth. At the first meeting of each month, the club honors two high school students. The honorees rotate among four schools: Canyon del Oro, Pusch Ridge Christian Academy, Immaculate Heart, and Ironwood Ridge. The students give information about their activities, their plans for the future, snd their thoughts on a selected subject. Each student receives a certificate. In May, the club awards $1000 scholarships to three students.

Food Bank

The Oro Valley Rotary Club supports the Catalina Food Bank by passing a donation jar at every meeting. Club members donate hundreds of dollars each year to help feed the hungry.

Rotary Vocational Fund of Arizona

This nonprofit educational program is sponsored by the Rotary Clubs of Arizona and Needles, CA. It provides scholarship funds for individuals to acquire, develop, or improve specific job skills. Oro Valley Rotary supports this program and has sponsored several scholarship recipients, including a single mother learning radiation technology.

International Service

Kenyan health clinic

The Woodbury, MN club is spearheading a project to open a health clinic in Uluthe, Kenya. The nearest clinic is about 30 miles away, and they have no transportation. So a local clinic will provide a tremendous improvement in health care.

The key issues they will be pursuing are malaria, HIV, typhoid, diabetes, and dental and eye care. The project will be to provide a building for a clinic, organize volunteer health care providers, and purchase drugs, equipment and instructional materials for use by the clinic staff. A small fee will be charged, and the intention is for the community to assume control of the whole operation in three years.

The clinic is slated to open in February of 2007.

Port Alfred, South Africa, High school computer room

This school teaches 800 students computer skills they need for employment. It also provides the facility to train local government officials on computer usage.

The objective of this project is to equip a computer lab with computer hardware, software, and other instructional aids to provide the skills training these students and government employees need. There is no possibility of the government providing these facilities.

Pacamebu Project, Brazil

Pacembu is a poor, remote area with dedicated teachers and motivated students, but with few resources to use in teaching. The project will supply fifteen computers, monitors for interactive teaching, copying equipment and basic printed teaching media, and laboratory equipment for biology, chemistry, and physics classes.