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!

Former Irvine Spectrum Rotarian Enters Assembly Race

Dan Hoffman, a former Irvine Spectrum Rotary Club member, expressed his desire to run for California State Assembly. Petitioning to put his name on the ballot, Hoffman will run for the 70th District. Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R) currently holds the 70th District seat, which includes Irvine. DeVore is leaving the Assembly due to term limits. After giving a brief review of politics in California, Hoffman shared the procedure of running for office.

Hoffman, who has lived in Irvine in 15 years, states he is the best Republican to take this seat. He expressed his concern for the current state of California and said that is the main reason he is running. Current issues with California include the loss of $16 billion and paying more money for California’s prisons versus education. Tuitions at state universities have increased exponentially across California, wherein salaries for correction officers exceed that of educators. Hoffman went on to share that in 2006 California spent $227 million in overtime to certain groups of corrections officers.

As a result of the economy, according to Hoffman, there have been severe cuts across the state affecting all services. As a result many incumbents are disillusioned and not looking to run for office again. The state’s loss of a substantial amount of its budget is the main reason Hoffman says he is running for office, “I’m looking to raise money and create jobs for the state without raising taxes.” Hoffman also believes it is time to stop passing laws for the sake of passing laws.

Myanmar Water Project

John Brainerd spoke about Rotary’s water program in Myanmar. Major activity in Myanmar is agriculture – even orphanages grown gardens. However, due to a lack of infrastructure, children had to walk to a river to fill buckets and carry them quite a distance back to the orphanage garden. Instead of attending school and socializing children were carrying buckets of water back and forth to take care of the garden.

Two and a half billion people lack access to clean water. Each year 1.8 million people die from diarrhea, much of it cause from severe diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. Eighty-eight percent of deaths are due to unsafe water or inadequate sanitation or hygiene, and 1.4 million are children ages five and younger, according to the World Health Organization. Malnutrition- related deaths of children five and under caused by unsafe water, inadequate sanitation, and insufficient hygiene total 860,000 a year.

When Rotary inquired further as to what Myanmar needed most – physicians in Myanmar stated they needed permanent water projects. Though a daunting project, Rotary agreed and has already designed and built 15 of the 60 requested systems. Working with Save the Children and the Myanmar Compassion Project, the project is serving 200 orphanages. Seventy to eighty percent of the water is used for agriculture, ten percent is used for kitchen use, and ten percent is used for laundry. The children now have time for school and social activities. Newport continues to work with Maesai Rotary to keep the project alive.

To find out more about the Myanmar Water Project, including the project’s entire history and how to make donations go to: http://www.myanmarwater.org/

Laguna College of Arts and Design

Laguna College of the Arts & Design student Trevor Christianson presented his junior class artwork to the Spectrum Rotary Club. Introduced by the school’s VP of Development, Patsee Ober, Trevor also thanked the Club and Fairhaven for his scholarship he received.

Laguna College of the Arts and Design, an accredited college, and requires a portfolio from applicants, is home to 110 students and will celebrate its 50th anniversary in two years. Located in the Laguna Canyon, it is a beautiful campus and well designed for art students. The school provides education at the bachelor and master level, creating future artists who express their talent through traditional art, i.e. painting, sculpture, sketching to newer forms of art such as animation and game art. Ninety six percent of the college’s students benefit from financial aid.

Trevor shared the story of his journey to LCAD. Originally from Northern California, Trevor attended community college before being accepted at LCAD. Impressed by the success of the students, Trevor made LCAD his priority. He shared the process of his paintings – from beginning to end – and shared that the best teachers teach them to use their gifts and strengths.

Patsee offered the Club to visit the school to view the students’ artwork on display. The school is at 2222 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach, CA 92651. Please contact Patsse Ober at 949.376.6000 x229 to find out more about the school.

Beautiful Taiwan

by Lisa Grajewski

Speaker: Maxine Lu—Project Manager, Taiwan Tourism Bureau

National Geographic Travel has described Taiwan as the “best kept secret.” After a stunning presentation by Maxine Lu, it would be hard to disagree with the magazine’s assessment.

The Island, off the South East coast of China, is a 14 hour flight from Los Angles and well wroth the time in the air! Approximately 14,400 square miles, Taiwan is slightly larger than Maryland. It is home to 23 million people, all of whom speak a myriad of languages: from Mandarin and Taiwanese to Hakka and other indigenous languages. English is also a prominent language in Taiwan.

The Taiwan Tourism Bureau has worked hard to market Taiwan, drawing visitors from all walks of life – for all reasons. The new logo for Taiwan:

T = A house
A = the host
I = the guest
W = host & guest shaking hands
A & N = The host is offering tea to the guest

For those participating in the Rotary trip to Taiwan there is a lot to choose from for the traveler. Whether you are interested in art, and decide to visit the National Palace Museum, home to one of the largest collections of Chinese art and one of the top museums in the world or you want to ride on the Alishan, one of three remaining Alpine trains – Taiwan will keep you busy. For the foodies, Din Tai Fung, one of the top 10 gourmet restaurants in the world (according to NY Times) is an opportunity to experience delicate and delectable dumplings. And, as Taiwan encapsulates the best of Chinese cuisine, you will have many other opportunities to temp your taste buds!

Taiwan is also known for its natural beauty, diverse species (a quarter of the world’s animal species are found in Taiwan, as well as exclusive species) and breath taking destinations, such as Sun Moon Lake - Taiwan’s “Lake Tahoe” and a favorite honeymoon destination. Sunrise is particularly favorable as the water changes color with the rising son.

Along side the environmental diversity, Taiwan is diverse in its racial, cultural, and ethnic makeup as well. In addition to the several languages spoken in Taiwan, cultural influences from the Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, English and others can be found in the tiny country. It truly seems there is something for everyone in Taiwan.