Christianne Dettmann
Investing in the youth of one’s community is always a smart choice. This is just one reason you will find three dedicated members of the SaddleBrooke Sunrise Rotary Club—Maggie DeBlock, Julia Halvacs, and Patty See—making the trek every week up to the Mammoth-San Manuel Unified School District throughout the school year to assist teachers at the lower elementary school level.
These volunteers are integral contributors to the classroom environment, working with students on a variety of subjects ranging from language arts to mathematics. By providing or enabling additional individualized attention, they strive to build each child’s confidence—word by word, number by number—all the while affirming how special and cared for they truly are. Further, these volunteers have helped stock classrooms with books, electric pencil sharpeners, and even Tagalog dictionaries!
Most of us know investing is a long game and that every contribution, no matter how small, compounds over time. Each hour, each week, each book, each resource … all work together to build the futures and sharpen the minds of the young lives that will eventually power our communities one day. The club also invests in them and their families by maintaining Little Free Libraries outside of three schools in Oracle, San Manuel, and Winkelman.
To learn more about this and other ways you could invest your time and talents into community initiatives with this dedicated and fun club, please email saddlebrookesunriserotary@gmail.com. Regular meetings are held at 7:45 a.m. on the first and third Thursday of each month in the Mesa Room of the La Hacienda Clubhouse at SaddleBrooke Ranch. Come join us!