Ensenada Dental Clinic a milestone.

by Ray Sanford

Our club celebrated it's 11th international dental clinic this weekend by helping the children of Escuela Primaria "La Esperanza" in a remote section of Ensenada. This very poor neighborhood is comprised mostly of immigrants from the southern regions of Mexico and Central America who have moved north looking for work.

Each clinic is at a different school and is picked by the Ensenada Calafia Rotary Club in conjunction with the Ensenada Department of Education to pick the school most in need. This clinic was attended by almost 50 children, each sporting a Rotary sticker. Altogether, over $36,000 of free dental services was delivered in one long day.

The clinic also marked Dr. Tozzer's and Dental Care for Children's 90th clinic in Baja California over the last 18 years. In a ceremony during the clinic, dignitaries from Ensenada and Baja California arrived to present him with a plaque noting his continued giving to the citizens of Ensenada. To date, the amount of free dental services the organization has provided to the Ensenada region tops $2.5 million.

Notable were the volunteers from around the world. Besides dentists and specialists from Southern California, others came from Peru, Brazil, India, Lebanon, Egypt and Armenia. Joining them were more students from the USC Dental School and a visiting Rotarian from London, England.

While our club members have helped by painting, building and furnishing school supplies in the past, this clinic marked a transition to having most of the work done by the children and families who were receiving treatment. This way, the clinic isn't a "hand-out" as each person gives back something to support the school. Entire families, as well as club members from both Irvine Spectrum and Ensenada Calafia clubs pitched in to plant trees and do much needed repainting.

Saturday evening, while the USC students were busy visiting the attractions in downtown Ensenada, the Rotarians were treated to a fabulous dinner at the home of Fabiola and Miguel Valdez. Fabiola is an Ensenada dentist and a member of the Ensenada Calafia Rotary club.

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Irvine Spectrum Rotary goes "Hands On"

The Irvine Spectrum Rotary recently gave a gift to a local food pantry that brought their years' giving to five thousand dollars! "The club has not only generously given of their dollars" said Ed Ewart, Executive Director of South County Outreach, "the members have been on site all year round handing out turkeys at the holidays, donating back-packs for low-income children and even mopping the pantry floors and painting donation barrels."

$1,500 of the grant was funded by the Rotary District 5320 matching grant foundation chaired by Grant Eagle. This district grant was applied for by Steve Zivolich, the community services donation chair of the Irvine Spectrum Rotary Club Board of Directors. The remainder of the $5,000 donation was made up of donations and fund raising efforts of the Irvine Spectrum Rotary Club membership. In addition to the financial donation, several Rotary members volunteer their time at the South County Outreach food bank including Peggy Slater who also serves on the South County Outreach Board of Directors.

"This is the kind of community partnership that makes a difference in the lives of people" said Ewart. Through the Rotarians generosity, and that of other donors South County Outreach was able to provide 63,714 services to individuals in need last year. Emergency services include groceries and financial assistance but more importantly the agency attempts to provide tools that help people help themselves. Those tools include a Computer Learning Center. where people receive free job skill training and the opportunity to develop a Self Sufficiency Action Plan that helps people take charge of their financial future.

"I want to express our deepest appreciation to the volunteers and donors of the Irvine Spectrum Rotary and Rotary International for their incredible generosity and for giving a "hand up" to people in need with their "hands on" service", said Ed Ewart.

Irvine Spectrum helps fund program for persons with disabilities

Jewish Family Services of Orange County has announced the launching of it’s new program to provide supports to persons with disabilities and their families. The new program titled Special Needs Support Services (SNSS) will help families and persons with disabilities, to facilitate services that are provided in inclusive and community based contexts. As a Jewish Family Service program, SNSS is non-sectarian and therefore services are available to the entire community.

Dr. Jan Weiner the new SNSS program coordinator is also a staff member of the special education department at California State University, Fullerton. Dr. Weiner has over 25 years of experience in the field of disabilities with a special emphasis on best practice programs for persons with autism spectrum disorder. She was also the project director of the Full Inclusion Pre-school Project that resulted in over 100 students with significant disabilities integrating into regular pre-school programs throughout Orange County.

Dr. Weiner noted, that “The SNSS program will include information regarding laws/legislation on families’/consumers’ rights, authentic assessment, strategy development for positive behavior support, advisement on evidence based best practice, universal design, accommodations consultation, collaboration with schools and other community facilities to design inclusive opportunities, assistance with developing IEP/ITP/IFS goals and objectives and referrals to additional resources”.

Dr. Weiner also explained that “this program was initiated and designed based on an extensive needs assessment completed by the Jewish Family Service Special Needs Commission, that is representative of the Orange County community of persons with disabilities and their families”.

SNSS has received funding support to date from two individual family donations and the Irvine Spectrum Rotary Club.

Ensenada Dental Clinic

The school for our upcoming dental clinic has been selected. It's in the same general area as the last clinic but it's smaller and even poorer.

Lupita Creo, International chair for the Ensenada Calafia club is arranging discounted prices on rooms at the Hotel Coral, our 5-star home away from home.
http://hotelcoral.com/English/html/Hotel/Hotel.html

She's also passing the word to the school principal and teachers that we expect the families of the children treated to assist in any fix-up work we're doing. This is to keep the families involved and to help them take ownership of the school so our efforts to fix it up will remain.


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The singing angel

Irvine Spectrum Rotary was serenade by the Harmony Partners barbershop quartet. Partners in Harmony, an organization started by Warren Willard, a founding member of our club, is dedicated to supporting youth vocal programs in middle and high schools. The group recently raised money for Tesoro High School to allow for a quartet to compete in the Far Western Competition in Reno.

Following the barbershop quartet the club heard from Naomi Montero, a ten year old 4th grader who raised the roof with her beautiful soprano voice.

Naomi’s family immigrated to the US to realize Naomi’s potential. She currently studies voice lessons with Selma Hayak’s mother and is enrolled in a charter school with an emphasis on the arts.

The Irvine Spectrum Club donated $1,000 to support Partner's in Harmony training and several members of the club presented individual donations to help Naomi.

If you are interested in donating please contact John Alcorn.

Everyone has a secret!

According to Randy Wood, everyone has a secret! Randy gave his inaugural Craft Talk on March 3rd. His business: keeping people honest.

Randy helps businesses keep people honest by providing detection and prevention of fraud through education, technology and kinesics interviews and interrogation.

Randy shared that businesses loose up to seven percent (annually) due to fraud and it often goes undetected for years. Small private businesses tend to be the biggest losers due to asset misappropriation. This past year has been especially significant with regard to fraud as financial targets are harder to achieve, people are afraid of loosing jobs, companies are offering fewer bonuses and many employees are doing more work for the same amount of pay.

Thanks to Randy for educating us on how to watch out for deviance in the workplace!