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A Visit from LASS

On Monday 11 September, Thomas Briginshaw, Literacy Outreach Coordinator for the Literacy Alliance of the Shuswap Society, spoke to our members about LASS and its mission to promote literacy in the North Okanagan-Shuswap area. A District Literacy Plan has been developed with a focus on literacy awareness, collaboration, and and education in the four pillar areas: Early Learning, K-12 Literacy, Adult Literacy, and Aboriginal Literacy. Babies, pre-school and school-age children, adults and seniors benefit from programs such as Books for Babies, Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, One-on-one Reading, Unplug and Play, Enderby Adult Tablet Training, and Cyber Seniors Computer Tutoring. Seen here with President Kari Wilkinson, Thomas holds some of the many children's books that are distributed monthly to pre-school children in the Shuswap communities.

Double Up Your Gift 2023

Thanks to the incredible generosity of people in our community, an amazing total of $57,801 was raised for the Safe Society and the Second Harvest Food Bank during the Rotary Club of Salmon Arm’s recent
“Double Up Your Gift” campaign. The goal was to ask individuals and businesses to donate, and Rotary would match those up to $10,000 for each organization. Community donations made were actually
more than that goal! More and more will be needed from these organizations right now due to major losses incurred by families that were caused by major fires in our area.

Pictured with Rotarians Winston Lee-Hai & Kari Wilkinson are Vahlleri Semeniuk from Second Harvest Food Bank and Jane Shirley from the Safe Society.

Welcome New Member Morgan Turland

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This week, new member Morgan Turland gave her Bio to the club. She talked about her childhood growing up in Maple Ridge, her education and how she arrived in Salmon Arm. Business, Architecture and Education Assistant programs are some of her educational successes.

She started a business in creating wooden signs and teaching this craft.

She is a mother of two and is currently working at the School District. She also does numerous volunteering for our community, one being as Rotarian for our club.

School Lunch Program

In 2014 the Rotary Club of Salmon Arm discovered that many students in School District #83 went to school without lunch. The lack of a noon meal meant that they were unable to focus on learning, so their education was compromised. The club decided to do something about the situation, and so a School Lunch Program was born.

For nine years, since September 2014, we have donated $160,000 to support a school lunch program to help hungry students get through the school day. Our partner was Askew's whose gift cards were provided to all 25 of the district schools and Parent Advisory Committees, which include Sicamous, Sorrento, Armstrong, Enderby, Falkland, and all the Salmon Arm schools. Throughout the program, we received positive feedback many times from school principals and teachers about the importance of student lunches in the learning process.

Now our participation in this program has come to an end because the provincial government will be taking over. "Through Budget 2023, the Province is investing $214 million over three years so school districts can create or expand local food programs in schools throughout B.C. The funds will be used for purchasing food and hiring dedicated staff to co-ordinate providing meals and snacks to students. This is the largest investment in school food programs in the Province’s history." (https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases)

Recent Speakers

We have enjoyed hearing from two interesting speakers on July 17 and 24. Valerie Rogers, an award -winning nature artist and resident of Salmon Arm brought a selection of her paintings and explained how her passion for nature and wildlife helps her to create lifelike paintings. She has been awarded BC Wildlife Federation Artist of the Year twice. Her most recent notable success is winning the 2023-24 prestigious Pacific Salmon Stamp competition. She is shown above with Rotarian Hazel Nevrkla and her painting, Vantage Point.

Scholarships 2023

Here are the bursary and scholarship recipients we were proud to support this year. A 'scholarship' is based on academic scores only, while a 'bursary' is determined on activities, contribution to the school and sometimes financial need for a student to go further.

Salmon Arm Secondary:

Bursaries of $2,000 each to Mikayla Wilkinson & Abbigail Paetch; scholarships of $1,500 each to Caydn Moraice Budalich and Emily Gauthier

Okanagan College:

Bursaries of $3,000 each to Ezra Medio and Gloria Ordonez.

King's Christian School:

Scholarships of $1,500 to Ben Stalker, and $500 to Jasmine Gossen.

PICTURES: Abbigail and Mikayla in their graduation gowns; Gloria Ordonez with member Chaten Randhawa; Ezra Medio with then President Garry Hoffart.

July 1 Musical Ride

Rotary and the Agricultural Association celebrated Canada Day in grand style with a performance of the RCMP Musical Ride. Following are some pictures from this event, which was held at the Salmon Arm Fairgrounds.

The weather cooperated with lots of sunshine, but a strong wind during the ride stirred up the dust!

Musical Ride History: Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II took a keen interest in horses and was highly knowledgeable about them. She had a long and close relationship with the RCMP which began in 1969 and lasted over 50 years during which time, the RCMP presented Her Majesty with eight horses and received two from her: Golden Jubilee and Victoria.

The first and most beloved was Burmese, who was given to her in April 1969. The Queen rode Burmese for 18 years at the annual Trooping of the Colour event.

Meet Our New Board Members

Posted by Hazel Nevrkla

Last week we installed our Board members for 2023-2024 (July 1 - June 30).

In the picture, from left: Kari Wilkinson, Dan Hudson, Sterling Land, Darcy Johnston, Rob Marshall, Jenna Robins, Sarah Sigurdson, Garry Hoffart. Missing - Marvel Holmes, Chaten Randhawa, and Lynda Stepura.

Click on Read More to see more pictures.

Fly the Flag 2023

CLICK THE GRAPHIC TO GO TO THE REGISTRATION PAGE

Put Salmon Arm on the map again this year as the city that flies our Canadian flag.

Chaten's Bio

We were recently treated to a bio from new member Chaten Randhawa, who told us all about his upbringing in Vernon (where he met another of our new members - Kyle Gadbois) and his work life which took him all over Canada. On hand to make sure he got everything right was daughter Isabella.

Speakers April 17

We had an interesting talk by Sapphire Games from the Salmon Arm Visitor Centre (seen here with member Rob Marshall).

And new member Kyle Gadbois gave us his bio (see here with President Elect Kari Wilkinson.

Exchange Students are Here Again!

After a pause in our Youth Exchange Program because of Covid, we are glad to be up and running again. Seen in the picture are Porsche (left), our Salmon Arm student who will be going to Austria in August, and Paulina, who came from Austria last August. They met at the recent Youth Exchange Orientation in Penticton.

Shuswap Youth Soccer

Chad Foreman from Shuswap Youth Soccer recently came to speak to us about the programs that are offered in our community for kids from the ages of 2 to18 years. Over 1200 youth soccer players signed up last year. The organization is looking for support to fund two turf fields for our community as soccer seems to get more popular every year. These fields would support our community with any growth that is predicted going forward. You can find out more about this organization at http://shuswapsoccer.com/