Sunup Rotary Holiday Party A Successful Evening
 

Among the lovely ladies enjoying this year's Holiday Dinner Party were Christy Manning, Cassidy Stauffer, Marsha Teller and Lisa Doherty.

 

Thanks to the planning and and preparation by Cassidy Stauffer, who served as the Chair of the event, our club's annual Holiday Dinner Party proved to be a great evening of Rotary fun and fellowship for all who attended.   As the members and their guests arrived, the stacks of canned goods for the Yavapai College food bank, along with piles of school supplies for the students in Mayer, continued to grow.  The appetizers and the dinner were excellent, and the white elephant gift exchange, with its keenest competition being for some of the liquid gifts, made for a lively evening, with lots of laughter,  Our sincere thanks to Cassidy!

 

 

 

The big announcement by President-Elect Christy Manning at the Holiday Dinner Party was that Jane Anne Shimizu has been chosen to serve as Prescott Sunup Rotary's Club President during the 2025-26 Rotary year.  Jane Anne is seen in this photo, after having been introduced as our President-Nominee, predicting the success of our upcoming Duck Derby fundraiser.  She reminded us that, some years ago, our club raised $40,000 from a Duck Race.  Congratulations, Jane Anne!  We look forward to your leadership of our club .

 

Also announced at the dinner by Joe Sweeney, our Assistant Governor, was the appointment of Katheryn Tuberty as his AG successor, effective July 1.  Katheryn served as Club Service Director of our club for a time, before she became a member of the Prescott Frontier Rotary Club.  Joe was recently chosen to move into the District Governor line, as the DGND.

 

 

The Rotary Foundation is often described as "the enabling arm of Rotary."  Through each Rotarian's regular annual contributions to Our Foundation, we are able to pool our money, and to leverage our club's available funds to accomplish, through the matching of our funds, larger service projects than we could ever do on our own.  The Rotary Foundation currently has two types of grants: District Grants and Global Grants.  It was by our three Rotary clubs in Prescott working together, and using TRF District Grants, that we were able to launch what has become the largest, and most effective literacy project in Yavapai County.  Working with Prescott City Library in 2019, we brought the Dolly Parton Imagination Library program to Prescott.  Through this program, an enrolled child, from birth until reaching the age of 5, receives an age-appropriate book each month.  750 kids were enrolled in the original program.  Currently, 2,375 children are enrolled.  The Verde Valley has its own similar program, which had been initiated by the Rotary clubs in Sedona, before we began ours here in Prescott.  Our Prescott program has now been expanded to cover the remainder of Yavapai County, not covered by the Verde Valley program.  In a Prescott Courier article this past week it was reported that our program has tripled its number or participants in the past year and a half.  Without our TRF "enabling arm," this would have never happened.

 

 

 

 

President Laura has arranged for Gina Lloyd, the Mayer Schools Family Resource person, to be with us this Wednesday evening for our informal social meeting.  We will be presenting to her the school supplies our club members have donated for this project.  Laura says it is not too late to get in on this project.  You can still bring more school supplies to Wednesday night's meeting.