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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. We're excited to have Kaitlyn leading the club along with Alexandra Arnold as Secretary/Membership Chair and Anne-Britt Ostlund as Treasurer. The club's July Happy Hour will be Wednesday, July 26, 5:45 - 7 at Tellurado (219 E. Colorado Ave.). The next regular club meeting will be Wednesday, Aug. 9, 6 p.m., speaker TBD. 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.
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. Our club will welcome a high school boy from Thailand to the community this August. In 2022-23, our club hosted Annemarie Davidova from the Czech Republic. We also sponsored two THS boys to travel abroad, Philip Brooks to Austria, and Liam Intemann to Argentina. Read this local news article about them. They are pictured here.
Find out more about Rotary Youth Exchange and being a host family at mountainandplainsrye.com.
Rotary Youth Exchange not only provides a life-changing experience for the students who go abroad, but also enriches the classrooms and community by sharing their perspectives and culture. Through Rotary Youth Exchange, Rotary clubs build cross-cultural ties and create international ambassadors of goodwill and understanding.
To make this great program happen, our club must find host families for an inbound foreign student; the program functions as a two-way exchange. This is a fulfilling experience for any household, as you share your family traditions and American culture while learning about theirs. While it is optimal to have host families with a student at Telluride Middle/High School, it’s not necessary; host families can have younger children, be empty-nesters or be single parents. If this is an opportunity that interests you, please contact our club’s Rotary Youth Exchange Officer Patricia Kiernan, kiernanpatricia6@gmail.com or 619-517-5336; or you may direct general questions to telluriderotary@gmail.com.
Pictured here: 2022-23 exchange student Annemarie from the Czech Republic with THS student Mesa Barnes, who will be a Rotary Youth Exchange student to Colombia in 2023-24. The two girls helped our Rotary Club at a community trash cleanup in May.
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.
Donors honored at 2023 Rotary International Convention
Donors honored at 2023 Rotary International
Rotary-USAID Partnership amplifies complementary strengths
Rotary-USAID Partnership amplifies complementary
When it comes to fundraising Interactors are crushing it
Interactors have proven themselves to be successful fundraisers for The Rotary Foundation through a wide range of youth-led events.
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Telluride, CO 81435
United States of America