Rotarian of the Year 2021-2022

Sonya Sheffield

John Shirley Service Award

David Rounds

2021-22

Our Area 4 Clubs united to obtain nearly $97,000 in Rotary Grant Funding in support of three community health care providers. AXIS Community Health, Asian Health Services and Eden Hospital in purchasing the equipment they need to continue to support their clients during this time.

Rodeo week end is a big deal in our community. One of the highlights is the Rodeo Parade! For over 45 years the Rotary Club of Livermore has presented the annual Rodeo Parade on the second Saturday in June, starting at 10 a.m. 2018 was the 100th annual Livermore Rodeo, and the parade was bigger and better than ever, beginning with a cattle drive! Don’t miss next year’s parade! 

Club members and friends gather at the Rotary bandstand before heading out to help senior citizens with yard work, minor home repairs and other tasks they are unable to do themselves.

For more than 25 years our club has sponsored this program, as part of our International Focus on Youth.The Burned Children Foundation  provides  the care, education and rehabilitation of children with severe burns seeking treatment at COANIQUEM (All for the Burned Child) in Santiago, Chile. The organization does not charge for any of the services if provides to these children and families. Martin, show in the photo, is a young man that we have sponsored for five year.

Each year we distribute $16000+ in grants to community organizations and our schools. In the past ten years we have given more than $150,000 in support of our community.Pictured are recipients of January, 2019.

READY Students Celebrate at an End of Year Gathering!

The READY  (Rotarians Eduating and Directing Youth)program provides tutoring and mentoring to students at Junction K-8 school, which serves under-resourced students. Over nearly ten years we have provided support to middle school children, encouraging them to dream as big as they can. We continue to hear from students have graduated from high school!

Renovating a Home

This was a special project. Rotarians renovated a home to improve accessibility for a disabled woman. As you can see, the guys were having a great time!

Hundreds of hours were spent building this gift to the community. Working with the City of Livermore and Livermore Area Recreation and Park District,both Rotary Clubs, the Rotarian Foundation of Livermore  and many local contractors donated their time and money. More than one hundred community members bought commemorative bronze leaves, which are displayed on the back wall of bandstand.

For fifteen years we have given approximately 1000 third grade student in Livermore public schools a beautiful dictionary. These are visual as well as print, with photos and graphics, maps of the world, flags for each country, solar system and galaxies and beyond. We personalize each book with a name plate and deliver them to the classrooms, where we provide a “how to” lesson about using dictionaries.

Trip to the San Jose Tech Museum

READY students joined others in a wonderful trip to the museum, as part of our club initiated STEM scholarship program. The focus was on opening opportunities for migrant children.

For ten years we have honored our  Livermore teachers for all they do for our children. This  past year, the Rotary Club of Livermore honored nineteen teachers from the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District for their service. For the past 15 years, the Rotary Club has recognized teachers from each school and one Administrator from the district. The Principals and staff at each school choose their recipients. The Superintendent of Schools, Kelly Bowers, selects the Administrator. Unfortunately with COVID we needed to postpone this event in 2020. We have high hopes for its return in 2021.

For ten years the club has supported the Rotarian Foundation of Livermore’s party for under-resourced privileged children and families. More than1000 children and their parents have  attended the party over the years.

The Rotarian Foundation of Livermore was formed  so Rotary clubs could have a bigger impact in the community. This year the Rotarian Foundation of Livermore (RFL) awarded grants totaling  $45,203 to eleven community organizations at the Rotary Club of Livermore meeting. For more information visit the Foundation’s website.

Pictured here are John Shirley and Leo Croce, both long time Rotarians and WWII Veterans.  Sadly we lost Leo early in 2020.

Rotarians Assisting Veterans Education (RAVE) is a much needed charitable program to assist our military veterans attain their educational goals by way of the G.I. Bill of Rights. It is a 501(c)(3)approved non-profit tax deductible program that is spear-headed by the Livermore Rotary Club.

Rotarians and friends worked with Nicholas Carrano and his troop on his Eagle project, planting trees and moving mulch at Independence Park in Livermore.

For more than 50 years our club has partnered with International House  at UC Berkeley to provide the opportunity for international students to experience small town California and stay with a typical American family. Students visit landmark institutions in the community and are treated to an old fashioned “Pot Luck” dinner party.

Students from our local high schools spend a morning job-shadowing local government staff and first-responders to get a first hand look into the City Government operations. They are then invited to our luncheon, where they introduce themselves to the club and are treated to a State of the City program presented by the City Manager.

Sunflower Hill is an organization which focuses on children and adults with special needs, primarily on the autism spectrum. There is a community garden where participants plant and harvest vegetables for their own consumption and which are also sold to the public. Our club built picnic tables for them and helped build a new greenhouse last year.

Livermore, Del Valle, and Vineyard high schools’ staffs select outstanding students to be honored at a luncheon each month. The students receive a plaque and gifts from local businesses. Pictured is India D’Souza, Outstanding Student in October of this year, with LHS Principal Vicky Skudder.

For 20 years we have provided scholarships to music students in 8th -12th grade for lessons, camp, instrument rentals, and more. For 2020, The Music Scholarship committee received applications from 24 Livermore applicants from 6^th through 12^th grades.  The committee members met via Zoom last Wednesday and awarded fifteen scholarships.  Because we had fewer applicants than usual, and a higher percentage were really excellent, we granted scholarships to a higher than usual percentage of the students. 

The Club usually gives a special scholarship to an outstanding high school senior.  This year we had two amazing senior musicians, Austin Weinshelbaum on cello and Morgan Rogge, voice.

Each February we hold a club-level speech contest. Besides a monetary prize, the winner goes on to compete at the District Level. 2020contestants Zoe Bost, Gino Barbalinardoand Macarena Novoa-Delfin. All the speeches were excellent, with Zoe taking top honors. Zoe went on to take first place in the Area, and would have gone on to Regionals if not for COVID.

No matter what we do, we always enjoy ourselves! Here we are getting set up for back to school night!

Rotary International Youth Exchange encourages students to study abroad for one year. Our club has hosting many students from all over the world and this year our student was Elisa PeLince from Brussels, Belgium.  For Elisa, the year turned into quite the adventure, with COVID-19 turning the experience into something quite unique. She returned home a few months early and needed to quarantine for two weeks. She joined out club meetings via Zoom to keep us up to date.

When you participate in the Youth Exchange it is expected that there will be an outbound students as well. Even though we don’t always have a student from our own community, we support students from other Rotary club communities.

Rotary’s RYLA program encourages high school students to take on leaderships opportunities in their school and community. This week long camp uses team building and other tools to develop leadership skills in the students who participate. Each club in our District can send three students, with our club sometimes sending four. The students attend a Rotary meeting after they come back from camp, to tell us about their experiences. For many of them it is life changer!

Picture here are Gino Barbalinardo and Sarah Ansell, in the yellow RYLA shirts, from Livermore High School.

Rotary local grants give us the opportunity to invest in organizations that support our under-resourced population. AXIS Community Health received nearly $10,000 to purchase equipment for their free dental clinic in 2019.

In 2020, Stanford Valley Care received $10000 to provide support for conversion of regular hospital beds to COVID support. Our club membership matched that grant.

Also in 2020, our club was one of leads in obtaining a nearly $100,000 for COVID response  assistance to community health systems throughout our area.

If you have never attended our annual Crab Feed,  you have been missing out! We have been holding our event for over 60 years! Rotarians work hard and play hard to make this happen!

Every week we have a featured speaker. One of the more interesting things about needing to meet virtual is we can have speakers from all over the country or even the world. Here is a photo of a local group, from when we were meeting in person – Livermore High School Chorale!  They always do a great job, and many of them are Music scholarship recipients!

Past President of Rotary International Richard D. Kings lives right here in Livermore, so he visits us from time to time! Here he is with one of our outstanding and most revered Livermorians John Shirley!