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Welcome Kim! A Rotary Youth Exchange (RYE) student from Thailand, Kritsadiphat “Kim” Thongdong—pictured here with his host parents—is spending the school year at Telluride High and generously hosted by Dawn Davis, Dylan Brooks, and their sons Philip and Theo. Philip recently returned from a year in Austria as a RYE student. Another Telluride student, Liam Intemann, also spent last year abroad as a RYE student in Argentina.Telluride Rotary Club annually sends one or two high school students abroad on Rotary Youth Exchange, and welcomes one foreign student into our community. For the 2023-24 school year, we're excited to sponsor Telluride High students Mesa Barnes and Macy McRoberts to spend a school year abroad, living with host families. Mesa will go to Colombia, and Macy to Romania.
Rotary Youth Exchange enhances peace and international understanding by hosting high school students abroad to experience different cultures. To make this life-changing program work, we need host families! Host families host an exchange student for approximately three months. While it’s helpful to be a household with a high school student, families with younger kids, or empty-nester couples or single households also are welcome to apply to host. For more info see mountainandplainsrye.com and contact our club’s Rotary Youth Exchange officer Patricia Kiernan kiernanpatricia6@gmail.com.
Students who are interested in applying to go abroad on Rotary Youth Exchange also should visit the website mountainandplainsrye.com. The program is accepting applications from high school sophomores and juniors to live abroad for the 2024-25 school year, and applications are due by December 1.
Through Rotary Youth Exchange, Rotary clubs build cross-cultural ties and create international ambassadors of goodwill and understanding.
Pictured here (L-R): Macy McRoberts, THS student who’s in Romania; Annemarie Davidova, a RYE student from the Czech Republic who lived with host families in Telluride during the 2022-23 school year; and Mesa Barnes, a THS student spending the year in Colombia.
On June 21, our club celebrated the start of a new Rotary year, and President Roger Young passed the torch to 2023-24 Club President Kaitlyn James. In the 2023-24 Rotary year, our club will meet the second Wednesday of the month in the conference room of Ah-Haa School for the Arts, and will gather for a happy hour on the fourth Wednesday of the month at a different restaurant or bar. It's best to check Telluride Rotary's Facebook page or Instagram @telluriderotary for info on the location and speakers at each meeting.
Pictured here: 2022-23 Club President Roger Young, 2023-24 Club President Kaitlyn James, and Assistant District Governor Susan Lisak.
Thank you to the speakers who make our meetings so informative and interesting. If you are interested in being a guest speaker at our club's gatherings, or attending a meeting as a guest if you're interested in Rotary, please email telluriderotary@gmail.com. We host hybrid meetings, with a Zoom option for remote participants.
Click Read More below to see the list of past guest speakers.
Congratulations Class of 2023! Telluride Rotary is proud to support several graduates with scholarships totaling $10,500, along with a special annual Service Above Self award. These scholarships are made possible through donors and fundraising.
Telluride Rotary’s largest college scholarship of $5,000 went to Telluride High student Karla Gutierrez Ruiz, pictured here. Karla, who wants to be an elementary school teacher, impressed the committee with her genuine desire to help others. She wrote about a mentorship she had assisting the teacher in a dual immersion class and how much she loved working with the third graders. Since 2018, she has been a member of the THS Gay Straight Alliance and Communities That Care. For the last couple of years, she has also been a Peer Advocate, an Interact Club member, and was selected by her teachers to be part of a committee that is working to make her school a better place. Karla will attend Fort Lewis College in Durango.
The $500 John Micetic Athletic Award goes to THS student Cole Paczosa, who also earned one of our club's $500 academic scholarships. Cole is an outstanding freestyle moguls skier and has skied at the national and international level for the past three years and plans to continue training and competing while in college. Cole will study Business or Political Science at CU Boulder.
Additional scholarships went to the following students, all at Telluride High unless otherwise noted:
- $1000 to Taylor Holms
- $1000 to Evan Strand
- $750 to PJ Hulst
- $750 to Hollis Andrew
- $500 to Claire Jacobs
- $500 to Grace Gilhool
The 2023 Telluride Rotary Service Above Self honoree is Ava Osborne (picture here), who is matriculating to the Colorado School of Mines. Ava was chosen for her exceptional work in extracurriculars as well as in the classroom. Ava founded the THS Book Club at school to attract others to read more; she completed a Pinhead Institute science internship; she is a member of the Sources of Strength group that provides mental health advocate training; and, she co-directed this year’s Telluride AIDS Benefit Student Fashion Show.
Could you make a difference in a high school student’s life by making a tax-deductible donation to the Telluride Rotary Foundation for scholarships? In addition to giving through our Donate Now button, you may mail a check made out to Telluride Rotary Foundation with "scholarships" in the memo line and mail to PO Box 1265, Telluride, CO 81435. Or you may donate through Venmo @T-ride_Rotary_Foundation and indicate “scholarships” with the payment.
In the Rotary year of 2022-23, our club's main International project involved supporting a daycare center in Slovakia, near the Ukraine border, that is dedicated to helping children and their mothers who are Ukrainian war refugees. We donated $4000 to help grow the small but impactful Radost Center for Mothers and Children in Kosice, Slovakia. Read the Telluride Daily Planet article about it. Our other International grant, of $300, contributed to the Rotary Club of Vail/Eagle's grant to build a clean-water project benefitting several towns in Honduras.Locally, our club donated $250 to sponsor the community Trash Bash cleanup in May, and we provided volunteers to pick up approximately 70 pounds of trash. We also are co-sponsoring the June 24 Community Fiesta for to celebrate immigrant heritage with a $250 donation. And, we are sponsoring a Norwood high school student to attend the Rotary Youth Leadership Academy this June, at a cost of $350.
Earlier in the year, our club gave $500 to sponsor the Telluride AIDS Benefit Student Fashion Show and $500 to support Angel Baskets, which runs the Telluride Food Pantry. We also sponsored, with a $500 grant, the Out of the Darkness Walk for suicide prevention. Pictured here are some of the Telluride Rotary members who participated in the walk.
Last year, our club sponsored a Teen First Aid/CPR workshop in partnership with Wilkinson Public Library to teach teens life-saving skills and earn certification for child care, camp counseling, and other summer jobs. We also made donations to two nonprofits working to support maternal and child health, literacy, and economic development in Uganda. We donated $2500 to African Women Rising and $2500 to International Midwife Assistance. We invited the executive director of each organization to speak at our meeting via Zoom, to learn about the critically important work their organizations do to improve the lives and education of women in Northern Uganda.
Also in the prior Rotary year, our club approved granting $1000 to support the Telluride Medical Center's covid fund for staff support; $500 to the ShelterBox disaster relief organization; and $500 for the Telluride AIDS Benefit Student Fashion Show. We also contributed $500 to support the Rotary International Global Grant to build new schools and support girls' education in Kenya.
Our club is proud that a scholar we put forth as an applicant, Emma Walker-Silverman, has been awarded the prestigious Rotary International Global Grant Scholarship for $30,000 to support her PhD studies and fieldwork at the University of Oxford. Emma, born and raised in Telluride, is doing valuable and timely research on refugees, with a focus on refugee migration in Turkey, to understand and reduce conflict and suffering among refugees and host countries. Her work furthers Rotary International's mission of peace and conflict resolution. Many thanks to Rotary District 5470 for selecting and supporting Emma. Emma got her start as a Rotary ambassador by leading the Telluride High School Interact Club (a community service club sponsored by Telluride Rotary) and going on a life-changing year abroad to Turkey as part of Rotary Youth Exchange while in high school. Read the full story here to learn about Emma's focus of study.
The value of vigilance
Tenacious surveillance ensures that progress in the eradication of polio is not merely sustained but advanced
We are family: Rotary Youth Exchange
Rotary Youth Exchange offers both teens and host families the chance to grow
Rotary projects around the globe October 2023
Learn how Rotary clubs are taking action in the United States, Guatemala, Germany, Barbados, and Italy.
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Telluride, CO 81435
United States of America