Marymount Rotaract Club

Don Reeves introduced Antonio Argueta, Marymount Rotaract President, and presented him the Rotaract President’s pin.  Then Antonio presented Rotaract pins to Marymount Rotaractors Victoria Perez, Jacob Velasco, Danielle (Dani) Trueba and Ashley (Cami) Aguirre.  Earning a Rotaract pin requires a member to participate in at least 2 Club projects.  (Rotaractors Denise Zamora, Alan (AJ) Johnson, Marissa Montana and Adriana Muñoz, who have also earned pins, were unable to attend.)

Rotaract President Argueta opened the program by explaining the Marymount Rotaract Club’s many projects and activities.  He showed a photo slide presentation illustrating their projects, explaining each one briefly.  The first activity he showed was helping in several locations with the RAT (“Right After Torrance”) Beach Bike Marathon, which had a maximum route distance of 52 miles in the Palos Verdes area, starting from the intersection of Palos Verdes Drive North and East.

Other activities the Club participated in included the Norris Theatre Silent Auction-Dinner, Cabrillo Beach Cleanup, Pennies for Polio (they collected $400 on campus in one day), and Toys for Tecate, for which they collected 200 toys, although they took them to the Harbor Interfaith Center in San Pedro instead.nother activity was “Nika Water”, a bottled water program with recyclable bottles for raising money to help alleviate shortages of safe drinking water in other countries.  They participated in the “Hope 4 Kids” Christmas Benefit, with assistance from Interact Clubs from 2 high schools.

Pending activities include the Canyon Verde Carnival on March 10, with a day of activities, arts and crafts, and helping us with our District Rotary Day of Service on March 17.  Other projects include Book Buddies (sponsored by the Molina Foundation) to deliver books to children and become role models to them for reading; Heal the Bay beach cleanup; One Day Without Shoes on April 10 (to go without shoes on one day so kids don't have to, sponsored by TOMS Shoes, www.toms.com, “With every pair of shoes you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need”); and “Flings Bins”, a type of lightweight collapsible biodegradable recycling container to be placed around the Marymount campus through the month of April to raise money from recyclables for donating to local charities.