Since school has restarted, the five local Rotary Clubs are focusing on education and our youth in our community. The Rotary Club of East Montgomery County have heard from the Superintendent of Porter ISD and New Caney ISD. The Rotary Club of Conroe will be hearing from the newly appointed Conroe ISD Superintendent, David Vinson on Tuesday, October 28th, about a month from now.
Rotary Clubs are busily sponsoring Interact Clubs in most of the High Schools in the various school districts throughout Montgomery County. These Interact Clubs are basically Rotary Clubs on a High School basis. Rotarians attend the various Interact Club Meetings with each Interact Club have a school sponsor. It is mandatory to have a school sponsor. This additional work load requires financial incentives from Rotary Clubs as a stipend. Sponsors from both the school and Rotarians invest hundreds of hours per year in each Interact Club to encourage and train these young adults as our future leaders. This is time well spent. These Interact Clubs are already looking at local and international Projects. Each Project requires establishing a scope, a budget, and how funds will be raised to finance these Projects.
The Washington High School Interact Club is currently working on producing “candy rolls” using toilet paper rolls as forms to stuff hard candies in them and then wrap them with Christmas wrapping paper to forward to the orphanages in Mexico. The Conroe High School Interact Club is preparing money buckets to attract loose change in a program called “Pennies for Polio.” I am one of two Rotary sponsors for this Club and have challenged them to raise two thousand dollars for Rotary’s Polio Program which is slowly reaching its worldwide goal to completely eradicate Polio. There have been 33 Polio cases so far this year in the countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is a huge reduction from the five million annual cases in which a half million were paralyzed. When these young adults reach the two dollar goal, they are given the privilege to paint my head purple. The significance of this is that when infants are given the oral Polio sera, their little pinkies are painted purple. They are marked for years with that purple ink. My purple head should last for a few hours if I provide the proper spray paint! However, they will have the opportunity to have helped in the eradication of Polio and have fun in the process!
Maris Blair wowed the Rotary Club of Conroe with her account of how she raised the Conroe ISD Education Fund from a debt of five digits to raising a third of a million dollars annually with just one breakfast event. This woman had a varied life from classical piano music degree to a teacher while also being one of the first women in drag racing. She is an attorney with the Blair Law Firm and contributing to the community through the Education Foundation. She has finally outgrown drag racing and focusing on helping the youth and teachers with education scholarships!