As the first new member of Sycamore Rotary after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted, Mike Villalta gave his classification talk at this week’s meeting.  Villalta and his wife relocated to Sycamore from Los Banos, California in order to be closer to their daughter, son-in-law Rotarian Eric Jones, and their children.  But before moving, Villalta was born, raised, and became a community leader in Los Banos. He served as a teacher, school administrator, business owner, and mayor.

Villalta said he saw Los Banos grow from a town of about 2,000 in 1950 to its current population of more than 42,000. Having an interest in art and teaching, he attended Merced College and then transferred to the College of Notre Dame near San Francisco.  The previously all female college was just changing to a coed institution and Villalta was among only 15 men versus about 650 women at the school (one of those women would become his wife).  After graduation and some additional studies, he got a job as a sixth-grade teacher.  Ten years later he moved to the junior high level and finally added teaching art to his duties.  Shortly thereafter he moved into school administration (sometimes overseeing teachers who had taught him).  He eventually became the school district’s human resources director.

Villalta’s wife had earlier taken on ownership of a frame shop and Villalta joined her after retiring from the school district.  They began expanding their services to include corporate photography mountings (to the point where Mike had to rent large trucks to transport thee pieces) and photo restorations.  Villalta also got involved in politics in retirement, first getting elected to the city council and then serving five terms as mayor.  He noted that when he was first elected to the council in 2006 as many as 70% of the homes in the city were in foreclosure due to the housing finance industry collapse and the city was spending $250,000 more per month than they received in revenue.  Using the guidelines of:  Is it a good idea?; Can we afford it?; and Can we sustain it?; Villalta was able to guide the city to a $13 million dollar reserve fund by the time he left office. 

Villalta also said he has been a licensed HAM radio operator for 40 years and a member of Rotary for 36 years.

 

Welcome, Mike!

Hello fellow Rotarians,

 

After hundreds of Rotary clubs in Zones 33 and 34 provided millions of meals to community members in need during the inaugural year of their Feed 10 Million initiative in 2019-20, District 6910 in northern Georgia is serving up a generous portion in the food drive’s second year. As of late April, the district had provided more than 2 million meals. District 6910 coordinated with the Farmers to Families Food Box program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which was designed to address the waste of produce that was left to rot in fields as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, says Randy Redner, a past president of the Rotary Club of Duluth, Georgia. “The food is paid for by the government. We provide the organization, the volunteers, and the connectivity in the local community to make sure it goes to the people who need it.”

 

 

In the city of Chinandega, impoverished children scavenge at a garbage dump in search of items to resell. Frank Huezo, now a member of the Rotary Club of Kingwood, Texas, introduced his former club, the Rotary Club of Lake Houston Area, to the work of a local nonprofit called Fundación Chinandega 2001, which helps the children. Rotary members helped build a trade school, which trains students in practical skills such as woodworking, metalworking, welding, digital photography, and sewing. Funding from an expanding network of Rotary members in Texas and elsewhere also supported a hospital, a shelter for pregnant women, and a group home that helps blind children transition to mainstream schools.

 

 

To lift the spirits of health workers responding to the pandemic, members of the Rotary Club of Vilniaus sv. Kristoforo treated the staff of Vilnius City Clinical Hospital with pastries “to make them feel appreciated and, hopefully, make them smile a little more often,” says club member Giedrius Sulnius. Over the course of 10 Fridays concluding in late March, the club ordered 600 pastries, at a cost of $825, from a local bakery. “We cannot visit medics, but we can help them feel appreciated,” Sulnius says, while noting that documenting the “Smiles for Doctors” project proved to be a challenge. “As soon as someone tried to take a photo, the pastries were already gone.”

 

 

The Rotaract Club of Kie is devoted to helping schoolchildren. The club, which has raised money for the Rwandan unit of SOS Children’s Villages through T-shirt sales and a charity walk, heard about pupils whose families were having a hard time meeting the expenses of public school; although education in Rwanda is ostensibly free, costs still add up. The club donated books, pens, a mathematics set, and a schoolbagfor each of 15 students at the GS Gahanga I School, and covered fees and school uniforms, says Musa Kacheche, club president. The club also does smaller projects, such as street cleaning and building toilet facilities for senior citizens.

 

 

The Rotary Club of Amman Jordan River is making beautiful music. Club member Rana Rizkallah, maestro of the Youth Orchestra at the National Music Conservancy, assembled talented musicians for a Rotary-sponsored orchestra. For musicians who do not read music but can play by ear, the orchestra offers special classes in music reading, which Rizkallah notes might open up career opportunities. For the time being, all the members are Rotaractors, but Rizkallah hopes to open the orchestra to non-members in the future. Socially distanced rehearsals began in early 2021. With its repertoire of both Western and Arabic pieces, “the goals of the orchestra include offering in-house entertainment for all events and activities we organize, to save the cost of getting outside entertainment,” says Rizkallah.