Home Page | Rotary Club of West Ventura County

Our Club is very active in Youth Services, one of the 5 Rotary Avenues of Service. We are one of the only clubs that sponsor 2 Interact Clubs, St. Bonaventure and the newly official Pacifica high schools. St. Bonnies is the largest club in our District 5240 which comprises of 65 clubs. Dennis Longwill has been our Youth Services Chair for many years. He will be turning it over to Melanie Cota. Let’s give Dennis our thanks for his many, many, years of service and let Melanie know she can count on our support as she takes on this important function. Coming up May 19^th is our Annual Interact Bake sale. The Interactors (or their mom’s) prepare great cakes and pies. We bid on them and usually raise a couple of thousand dollars for their club. If you can’t make it, let one of your Rotary buddies have a proxy for you.

The Interact Clubs do several projects a year and help us with ours occasionally as well. This multiplies our Rotary presence throughout the west county.

Some of the projects we support are:

We sent 5 students to RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards) this year. The participants will come back and tell us how the retreat inspired them. Many of these participants become Rotarians down their road of life.
We awarded $40,000 in scholarships this year. Our Foundation funded these scholarships from the dollars we raised at the Mardi Gras.
Another major event we sponsor is the Youth Basketball Tournament which is the longest running such event in the nation! Girls and Boys teams from 4^th to 8^th grade from all over the area participate over a 3 week period to determine a champion.
We also sponsor a career fair where many young people get exposed to employers of all types. We’re helping young people transition in the real world.

Congratulations and many thanks to all of you who set a great example to the youth of our community!

Prez Z

President’s Message April 13, 2026

I just returned from the Ventura County Republican Convention. You now think this will be a political message. It’s not at all.It is a celebration of our political diversity and the democratic (small D!) process we all have the opportunity to debate our differences and participate in the process. I was asked to put my hat in the ring for the State Board of Equalization. The primary is June 2^nd.I said OK.I’m spending no money and likely have little chance to win. Stupidly, in my opinion, this should be a non-partisan race, but it isn’t so I had to identify the party I belong to. I also considered my position as your President. Your trust in me is much more important and will receive my priority the next month and half. What does this have to do with our Club, let me give it a go:

Our club has a wide range of political views. In private and sometimes during some networking we may discuss the issues of the day. I believe this is very healthy and simulative for all of us. We gain respect for each other and just because we fell one way or another, has never and will ever interfere with our common purpose to serve. However, we have an informal policy guideline to ask our speakers to avoid politically controversial subjects. Occasionally an elected official strays into this territory. It creates a bit of discomfort for some of our members, something we want to avoid. So let’s discuss this stuff out of the context of Rotary (you would be surprised on how many issues we agree on!) and continue our common good works in the community and the world.

This week we welcome back our favorite speaker and ultimate Rotarian, Wade Nomura. He will tell us stories about the world of Rotary. We had a small crowd due to the Easter holiday. Please try to make tomorrow. I promise you will leave inspired!

Prez - John Z

Rotary Foundation Good Works

President Message 3/28/2026

The Rotary Foundation

Our next West Ventura County Rotary meeting on April 7 will focus on the Rotary Foundation. This is how the Foundation Page on the Rotary.org website briefly describes the Foundation:

The Rotary Foundation transforms your gifts into service projects that change lives both close to home and around the world. Since it was founded more than 100 years ago, the Foundation has spent more than $4 billion on life-changing, sustainable projects. Together, we can make an impact in your community and around the world.

Our mission:

The Rotary Foundation helps Rotary members to advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace by improving health, providing quality education, improving the environment, and alleviating poverty.

What impact can one donation have?

$3 is the average cost to fully protect a child against polio.
$50 can maintain water filters to help fight waterborne illness.
$200 to develop work opportunities by replacing livestock for people impacted by disasters.

Each one of you donates $60 per year to the Foundation as part of your dues statement. Several of you donate more either by direct donation or through our “PHD” program. When your donations total $1000 you receive a Paul Harris Fellow Award. I’m proud to say that our Club has achieved the 100% designation, meaning that at one time every member of our Club was a Paul Harris Fellow. (As I’m sure you are aware, Paul Harris is the Founder of Rotary!) Our Club has committed $100 per member per year for the next three years. With about 60 members, our regular payments will get us most of the way there. Our various other fundraising (good news, club dues, events, etc) allow us to supplement the foundation dues income to meet that goal of $5000 this year. About a third of the money can come back to us in grants directly from the Foundation or from the district. Our big Autism program in Cameroon featured a matching grant of $13,000 as I recall.

The Foundation is one of, if not the largest, non-profit foundations in the world. Your donations are kept for three years so the corpus can grow and then the gains are distributed to member clubs and international programs such as Polio Plus. You and your 1.2 million fellow Rotarians have successfully eradicated polio with just a few cases now in the world. Pretty gratifying, Huh?

How can you increase your commitment to the Rotary Foundation:

Join our PHD program. All you need to do is donate an additional $25 or $50 per quarter on your Rotocharge invoice. That’s just $100 or $200 a year or a cup of Starbucks a week! I will have signups available as an attachment on the email and at our next meeting.

Donate directly to the Foundation. They have system on line. Here’s the link https://my.rotary.org/en/donate . You can designate your funds to one of the dedicated funds within the Foundation such Water, disaster Relief, Environmental, etc.

Bequeath – Here’s a simple one. Become a “Benefactor” by designating in your will that $1000 or more be left to the Rotary Foundation. Who will join me leaving a legacy to help continue the great works of Rotary. Our same sign ups will ask you for this commitment.