Youth Projects

The Rotary Club of Vancouver Sunrise has been very active in support of youth, both in our community and world-wide.  Here are a few of our recent projects:

Our club has endowed 2 post-secondary scholarships for students graduating from King George Secondary School in downtown Vancouver.  These are awarded annually and the students occasionally visit our meetings to tell us how they are doing at university.  We also help King George with vocational mentorships and other programs organized by the school counselors.

The club's annual "Hoop-a-Thon" at an inner-city community centre supports the sports programs organized for at-risk youth in the downtown east side of Vancouver.

Rotary Youth Exchange sends a high school student to another country for a year of high school and hosts a foreign student in Vancouver.  The students live with Rotary families, go to school and serve as ambassadors for their home countries.  Vancouver Sunrise sent Simon Hauck, a 16-year-old from the Vancouver area, to Italy in 2010-2011 and hosted Hanne Kooistra, an 18-year-old from the Netherlands.  This exchange is a superb way for young people to develop an appreciation for other cultures by first-hand experience.

Children and young adults with Down Syndrome have limited resources available to them in central Mexico, so our club is working with a local centre there to develop a training program for caregivers.  This will be the first of its kind in that part of Mexico and is sorely needed.  Our "Mexican Fiesta" fundraising events support this initiative.

Over several years, Vancouver Sunrise supported nursery schools and kindergartens in 3 impoverished rural villages in South Africa.  The funds we raised equipped the school facilities and provided clothing and other gifts for the children.