Rotary Club of Davis Sunrise
Welcome to Davis Sunrise Rotary
We are the bright-and-early morning Rotary club in Davis. Visit us and you’ll find 80-plus enthusiastic Rotarians who connect through a common goal of serving their community, locally and globally. And, of course, we offer breakfast and bottomless coffee.
If you are a visiting Rotarian from across the world or a person interested in finding out what Rotary is all about, we welcome you. Just show up on Friday morning at 6:50 a.m. and check us out. Be sure to introduce yourself so that we can introduce you to the club!
Our club offers opportunities for members to come up with ideas to help our community. Collaborating within our club and with others, we connect like-minded Rotarians to transform ideas into reality. As a result, local youth, seniors and others in need enjoy a better quality of life.
...And we make friends as we help others.
You will find us handing out beer at the Yolo County Fair, selling sausages and sauerkraut (and more beer) at our Oktoberfest, planting at the UC Davis Arboretum, building garden boxes at Davis Senior High School, constructing China Road for Grad Night, trading wit and quips with nonprofits at our Trivia Challenge fundraiser….
Davis Sunrise is particularly focused on helping youth: the children of migrant farm workers, foster children, or high school students seeking leadership skills or improving their literacy skills.
Our Student of the Month meeting celebrates students nominated by their teachers from Davis Senior High School, Da Vinci Charter School, King High School, and the Davis School for Independent Study. Students are chosen for their good citizenship, helpfulness to others and working through adversity to find success.
We work closely with high school Interact clubs and the Campus Rotaract Club of UC Davis. In addition, Yolo County senior citizens are served through our weekly work for Meals on Wheels, and many of us volunteer for Yolo Food Bank.
Our new Environment Committee is working on a project that will enhance and protect the lower Putah Creek watershed.
Our club, a member of Rotary International, is known for its interest in international service, with a focus on education and providing clean water. We have a Kenyan sister club, the Rotary Club of Nakuru. With our Kenyan friends, and with grants from Rotary International and our local Rotary district, we have built a rainwater harvesting system at a primary school, installed a solar power system to pump water for a school and community near Nakuru, and built a community water project in the village of Ichuni.
One of our most important projects, the Pads Project, provides reusable sanitary pads to impoverished girls and young women in Kenya, which enables them to remain in school. The Pads Project was adopted by the 2021/22 District 5160 Governor as her contribution to Rotary International’s global project, Empowering Girls.
Other recent projects have included providing portable libraries to schools in South Africa, science education in Sierra Leone, water quality in Cambodia and Bolivia, and health in Nicaragua and Uganda.
You will discover that the best part about Rotary is that it is fun. We start our meetings with song, continue with humor and friendship, and end with a renewed commitment to improving our world. Along the way, we make a lot of great friends who share a commitment to community service.