Chuck introduced Youth Services Chair, Cynthia Woodruff-Neer who welcomed everyone to our Celebration of Sen-iors and clarified that she was not talking about our membership. We were lucky to have students from Coast Un-ion and Leffingwell via Zoom to honor and celebrate our RYLA graduates and our scholarship winners.
Cynthia touted the work of Youth Services reminding us that our club raised $4100 for Interact in a virtual bake sale! In-teract voted at their last meeting to make donations to Doc-tors Without Borders, St. Jude’s Hospital, the World Wildlife Fund as well as local organizations such as ECHO and Camp Ocean Pines. Our club also funded the first ever Peace Essay Contest. All the 3rd graders received the book “Dreamers” and we are sponsoring a volleyball camp at the Middle School this summer that will be taught by high school students and paid for by our funding.
Christel Chesney is replacing Jane Howard as the leader of RYLA. Christel introduced this year’s RYLA graduates who attended via Zoom due to COVID. She congratulated them and told them she hoped their RYLA experience was something they will always remember.
Cynthia told us there were 35 graduating seniors from both CUHS and Leffingwell. From the graduating classes, Ro-tary received 16 scholarship applications from CUHS seniors and 2 from Leffingwell students. Donna Crocker, Paula Porter, Heidi Santos and Cynthia interviewed the students and selected 8 scholarship winners, weighing their aca-demics, extra curricular activities, written essays and personal interviews to reach their decisions.
Leffingwell graduate, Joey Acevedo, was unable to join us but Principal Justin Gish told us that Joey will be attend-ing Full Sail University in Florida to pursue a degree in music production.
Michelle Acosta will be attending Cal State Fullerton to major in Communications and Public Relations.
Chrystal Fabela will also be attending Cal State Fullerton, majoring in Criminal Justice and minor in Computer Sci-ence.
Samantha Fabela is excited to be going to UC Davis to study Political Science with plans to go further into the immi-gration system and see where that takes her.
Jonathan Jewell will be majoring in Computer Science at Cal Poly and plans to work towards some internships in order to gain experience while attending school.
Viviana Nunez was unable to attend but Mary Stenbeck, counselor at CUHS, told us Viviana is headed to UC Berkley majoring in Business.
Jasmine Pena, who hopes to join Rotaract when she gets to the University of Notre Dame where she will be major-ing in Political Science.
Zachery Stephenson will be going to UC Berkley this Fall. He plans on majoring in Business, but, since he does not have to declare un Junior year, he is leaving his options open.