Laurie Armstrong | Ellensburg Downtown Rotary
Laurie is described as the heart and soul of her club. She is a driving force behind its fundraiser and plays a major role in welcoming new members into Rotary.

Robert Wilson | Upper Kittitas County Rotary
Robert has led the club’s Scholarship Committee for many years, creating a thoughtful and organized process that helps students access opportunities and supports one of the club’s most important investments in the next generation.

Jim Becker | Upper Kittitas County Rotary
Jim brings a gift for fundraising and helping others understand why giving matters. He encourages the club to think bigger and helps members become more confident, inviting others to invest in their community.

Karen Grigg | Ellensburg Morning Rotary
A charter member, Karen has spent nearly 25 years serving her club through leadership, membership support, mentoring, and quiet guidance. Recognizing her at her final meeting before moving to Arizona made the moment especially meaningful.

Roseanna Niedziejko | Kamloops Aurora Rotary
Roseanna came to Rotary through Youth Exchange and, in just four years, has become involved in nearly every aspect of club life. Her support of Youth Exchange, public image, technology, projects, and volunteering makes a tremendous impact.

Jean Nelson | Clearwater Rotary
As a founding member, Jean’s steady service and long-standing commitment have helped shape Clearwater Rotary from the very beginning.

Michael Fane | Sun Peaks Rotary
Michael is a driving force behind the Charity Bottle Depot, giving countless hours to a project that creates significant impact for the club and community.

Ted Kierstead | Sun Peaks Rotary
A past president, Ted is deeply involved in the Bottle Depot and many other areas of club life. He is one of those members who quietly helps make things happen.

Jake Truscott | Kamloops West Rotary
Jake is already serving as Vice President and is involved throughout the club. Recognizing emerging leaders like Jake helps encourage their growth and strengthens Rotary’s future.

Terri Axani | Kamloops Daybreak Rotary
Terri’s service extends well beyond her own club. She gives her time and talents throughout District 5060 and truly embodies Service Above Self.

Barb Moses | Toppenish Rotary
Barb is often the first to step forward when there is work to be done. After more than 30 years in education, she continues to give generously to her club, community, and District 5060.

Shelby Hall | Grandview Rotary
Shelby shows up, gets the work done, and does it well. Her reliability and willingness to serve make her an important part of her club’s success.

Jeff Scott | Yakima Southwest Rotary
Jeff has brought new energy to youth programs through Youth Exchange, Interact, RYLA, and support for Rotaract. His passion for creating opportunities for young people is truly helping Fuel the Future.

Curt Vangstad | Yakima Sunrise Rotary
A member since 2000, Curt tirelessly promotes Rotary through fundraising, Operation Santa, highway cleanups, and countless other projects. His enthusiasm and generosity are wonderful examples of Service Above Self.

Frank Clifton | Wenatchee Rotary
Frank has served as club secretary for more than 12 years and has become one of the club’s go-to DACdb resources. He leads with heart, consistency, and service, and I am fortunate to also call him a dear friend.

Mike Nicholson | East Wenatchee Rotary
Mike does much of his work behind the scenes, managing social media, updating the club website, writing grants, and overseeing projects that help keep the club connected and moving forward.

Who Is Your Superstar?

There is no single description of a Rotary Superstar.

Some lead from the front. Some quietly work behind the scenes. Some have served Rotary for decades, while others are just beginning their leadership journey.

They raise money, mentor students, manage technology, recruit members, organize projects, welcome new ideas, and become the people everyone knows they can count on.

Every one of them matters.

As we work to create stronger clubs, increase engagement, develop leaders, and Fuel the Future, I hope we continue noticing the people who make Rotary work.

Look around your club.

Who is quietly creating the impact?
Who always shows up?
Who deserves to hear, “We see you, and what you do matters”?

They just might be our next District 5060 Superstar.

*Some photos of Superstars were not available at the time of publication. 

Rotary Youth Exchange is about much more than spending a year in another country. It is about learning how someone else sees the world. It is about sharing traditions, asking questions, trying new things, and discovering that even when our cultures are different, we often have much more in common than we realize.

These students will become part of our schools, our clubs, our families, and our communities. They will attend Rotary meetings, participate in service projects, experience holidays and traditions, and share pieces of their own cultures along the way.

And just as they will learn from us, we will learn from them.

That is one of the most powerful parts of Youth Exchange. One student, one host family, and one Rotary club can create connections that reach far beyond a single exchange year. Friendships continue. Families stay connected. Communities become more open and understanding.

To our inbound students, welcome to District 5060. We are excited to get to know you, learn from you, and watch your confidence grow throughout the year.

To our host families, Youth Exchange Officers, counselors, club members, and volunteers, thank you for opening your homes, your communities, and your lives to these young people.

This is how Rotary helps bridge cultures and create lifelong relationships.

The adventure has begun.

Education creates opportunity. Sometimes that opportunity begins with learning to read. Sometimes it's having the school supplies you need to walk confidently into a classroom. Sometimes it's a scholarship that makes college or technical training possible. And sometimes it's an experience that opens a young person's eyes to a world they never knew existed.

I've already seen examples throughout our district.

In Kamloops, Rotary clubs are supporting young people in ways that go far beyond the classroom. Kamloops Aurora has helped support the Starfish Backpack Program, making sure students have food and support beyond the school day. Kamloops Daybreak has invested in youth through Rotary Youth Exchange and support for organizations such as the YMCA, helping young people build confidence, connection, and life skills.

In Clearwater, Rotary Youth Exchange is one of the ways the club invests in education. A year abroad teaches far more than language and geography. It builds independence, cultural understanding, resilience, and a broader view of the world.

In Salmon Arm, Rotarians support literacy, scholarships, and Youth Exchange, creating opportunities for young people at many different stages of life.

And throughout the district, clubs are investing in students through scholarships, school supplies, mentoring, youth leadership, and hands-on learning opportunities.

In Yakima, Rotarians are helping provide backpacks and school supplies so students can begin the year ready to learn. The Rotary Club of Yakima has also made a significant investment in higher education through the Mollie Davis Scholarship program.

Upper Kittitas County, Moses Lake, Ephrata, and Grandview are among the many clubs helping students take their next step through scholarships and year-round support.

Different clubs. Different communities. Different projects.

But they all have something important in common.

They're telling young people, "We believe in you. Your future matters."

That is Fuel the Future.

And our investment in education doesn't have to stop with scholarships or traditional literacy programs.

Rotary Youth Exchange gives students an education that can't be found in a textbook. Interact develops leadership. RYLA builds confidence. Mentoring allows us to share our professional knowledge and life experiences with someone just beginning their journey.

Investing in the next generation can happen in countless ways.

Fuel the Future: Creating Lasting Impact

This Month's Challenge

During September, I challenge every club to ask one question:

How can we create an opportunity for a young person to learn, grow, or discover what's possible?

Maybe your club collects books or school supplies. Maybe you invite students to a meeting and ask about their goals. Perhaps you mentor a young professional, support a literacy organization, explore starting an Interact club, or begin planning your next scholarship.

It doesn't have to be a new major project.

Start with one action.

Because somewhere in your community is a young person who may simply need someone to invest in them.

Share Your Story

I know there are many more education and literacy stories happening throughout District 5060, and I want to hear them.

Tell us how your club is investing in students, education, literacy, or lifelong learning. Share a photo and the story behind it so we can celebrate your work and inspire other clubs across our district.

When we invest in someone's education, we aren't only helping them succeed today.

We're giving them the tools to create lasting impact tomorrow.

Together, we're Fueling the Future.

Jill Leonard

PDG Pete Erickson and PDG Marvin Munro


Marvin continued serving Rotary International as a President’s Representative and through Presidential and Zone Institutes, Past Officers Reunion, and Pacific Northwest PETS. Marvin and his wife, Sheran, are Major Donors to The Rotary Foundation, and Marvin was a Rotary Benefactor.

In June 2024, the Rotary Club of Kamloops celebrated Marvin’s 50 years as a Rotarian, recognizing five decades of friendship, leadership, and Service Above Self.

Marvin is survived by Sheran, their three daughters, three granddaughters, and a growing family of great and great-great-grandchildren.

District 5060 extends its deepest sympathy to Sheran and the Munro family and remembers Marvin with gratitude for his many years of leadership and service.

No services are planned, at Marvin’s request. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Marvin’s memory to the Royal Inland Hospital Foundation.

Through a dedicated international service alliance alongside our partner clubs in the Wine Country Rotary Cluster, our club has taken an active role in funding and establishing vibrant school libraries through the Chispa Project, bridging the educational divide for hundreds of Honduran children.

For most elementary students in Honduran communities, access to literature is virtually non-existent, with learning environments often restricted to rigid, outdated government textbooks that do little to inspire imagination or independent thought. The Chispa Project challenges this status quo by constructing dynamic, fully equipped reading spaces tailored directly to the needs of young learners. What sets this initiative apart—and why our club at Kelowna Ogopogo felt so strongly about investing our international service dollars here—is its rigorous focus on long-term sustainability and local accountability.

Rather than delivering books and stepping away, the Chispa Project requires candidate schools to undergo a strict vetting process that ensures the local community is deeply invested from day one. Selected schools must establish an active Library Committee comprising teachers, parents, and students to oversee operations. Furthermore, the local school community is required to fundraise a portion  of the total project costs themselves, instilling immediate civic pride, dignity, and a sense of true ownership over the new space. Once these commitments are met, the physical space is transformed into an inviting haven for reading, complete with handcrafted wooden shelving, bright floor cushions, comfortable reading mats, custom-tailored book collections, and hand-painted wall murals that turn reading into an exciting adventure.

Crucially, the investment extends beyond physical infrastructure through a two-year post-installation mentorship program. Chispa staff work directly with local educators to run specialized workshops on interactive teaching strategies, actively guiding them away from traditional, mechanical rote memorization toward critical thinking, comprehension, and open discussion. Simultaneously, workshops are held for parents—many of whom may struggle with literacy themselves—to help them establish supportive reading habits within the home, creating a self-sustaining culture of learning that spans generations.

The real impact of this methodology is illustrated in the municipality of Comayagua, Honduras, where two cluster-supported libraries are now actively changing lives. The story of the Iván Betancourth school stands out as a powerful testament to community resilience and global Rotary cooperation. When the school was originally founded, it possessed no physical building, no government backing, and zero educational resources. Teachers were forced to gather children inside private living rooms scattered across the neighborhood just to conduct daily lessons. Over many years of painstaking effort, parents and teachers worked together to construct proper classroom walls piece by piece. Partnering with Rotary and the Chispa Project allowed them to realize a dream decades in the making: converting a dedicated room into a fully furnished, colorful library that serves as the beating heart of the school today.

Achieving an international service footprint of this magnitude requires strategic vision and shared resources. While the Iván Betancorth school library District Grant was spearheaded by the Rotary Club of Lake Country and the Immaculada Concepcion school library District Grant was spearheaded by the Rotary Club of Salmon Arm, both initiatives relied heavily on the collective strength of the Wine Country Rotary Cluster for International Service. By joining hands with our regional neighbors—including the Rotary Club of Kelowna Sunrise, West Kelowna Daybreak Rotary, Rotary Club of Lake Country, Rotary Club of Salmon Arm, and Rotary Club of Kamloops Aurora Centennial—the Rotary Club of Kelowna Ogopogo helps pool club funds, leverage matching Rotary District Grants, and multiply the overall reach of our global contributions. Projects that might prove financially daunting or administratively overwhelming for a single club become fully realized realities when we collaborate across club boundaries.

As members of the Rotary Club of Kelowna Ogopogo, our financial stewardship and committee involvement ensure that every dollar raised in our local community creates maximum, measurable change abroad. By uniting six Okanagan and Interior clubs around a shared purpose, we are demonstrating the core ideal of Rotary: Service Above Self. From our home base in Kelowna all the way to the classrooms of Comayagua, we remain committed to ensuring that every child is given the opportunity to read, learn, and thrive.

Through the hard work of many dedicated people—and a special thank you to Ryan Buck for his assistance in completing the grant application—we successfully secured a $10,000 emergency grant.

Working alongside our outstanding partners at the Salvation Army and United Way BC, the Rotary Club of Kamloops Daybreak helped deliver a total of $12,000 in $50 gas cards directly into the hands of wildfire evacuees.

Perhaps the most remarkable part?

From identifying the need, securing the funding, building the partnerships, and distributing the support, the entire initiative was completed in less than 36 hours.

That's what happens when organizations work together with one common goal: helping people when they need it most.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who made this possible. Together, we showed that compassion, collaboration, and quick action can have an immediate impact on families facing incredibly difficult circumstances.

This is Rotary in action.

Service Above Self.

Baños de Agua Santa (Baños) is considered the gateway to the Amazon and with over a hundred small businesses facilitating adventures it is easy to see why the community is one of Ecuador's most visited tourist destinations.

But a short drive outside of the town itself you begin to see a different story.  Driving through the countryside it is easy to see the poverty; roughly 39% of rural households live in poverty.  Youth are leaving their homes to find opportunities in the bigger cities and the elderly are left to work in the fields and the few jobs that remain. 

One community in the surrounding mountains is doing something to slow and, hopefully, stop this trend.  In an area deeply connected to the land with a long history of agriculture, eleven small milk procuring families have created something to build economic resilience and development for the future.

San Nicolás Community Cheese Factory operates in the Vizcaya hamlet about 30 minutes north-east of Baños. It is run by the Las Orquídeas de San Nicolás Agricultural Association, legally organized in 2024 to cut out intermediaries and capture more value from their milk. Eleven families currently produce Andean cheeses for local business through the co-op.

The families want to increase their production, as currently they are only able to process 300 of the 600 L/day that their animals produce; the other remaining half of their milk is sold as raw, low-value milk because their processing plant cannot handle the extra capacity.

The demand for their soft cheeses already exists, but getting the final product to the consumer has proven to be more than the families can do.  With a lack of know-how and resources, this is a real problem for a community of people who want to build a better future for their families.

That is why the cheese factory has been chosen as the International project for Kamloops West Rotary and host club Baños de Agua Santa.  Through the collaborative efforts of both clubs, the grant will purchase equipment that is essential to the production upgrade, and provide training to the farm staff in operations and marketing.  This will support them in not only increasing production, but achieving key safety requirements needed to grow their own brand, enabling them to reach new customers and sell 100% of the cheese products produced.

The new equipment will increase capacity by 206%, going from 300 L/day to 917 L/day.  Within the community, five new jobs will be created, and member families will grow in the next five years from 11 to 20 families.

This means that the legacy of this project isn’t just one business, but an impact that grows outward from the centre.

Kamloops West is thrilled to be a part of this project, and we can’t wait to see the friends and families that we have begun to create in Baños. 

Just like the impact we make on our own communities, projects like these bring together the power of connection; making Service Above Self is not just a slogan but a way of being.   Each Rotarian who joins is left with a feeling deep within themselves, an inner knowing that the work they have done is part of something much bigger than themselves and takes home a part of Baños in their hearts that will last forever. 

If you or your club would like to join Kamloops West Rotary in Baños February 18-28 2027, feel free to connect with Mollie Sommer at mollie@molliesommer.com to learn more about how you can get involved.

As a District, we are committed to supporting affected communities across District 5060.

District leaders have allocated $10,000 toward disaster response, and we are working to combine those funds with support through a Disaster Response Grant from The Rotary Foundation. These resources will help strengthen our ability to support communities as they move from immediate response into recovery and rebuilding.

For members and clubs looking to help now, we encourage you to support a trusted organization in your own community or another affected area. Local Rotary clubs, food banks, community foundations, emergency relief organizations, and nonprofits often know where the greatest needs are and how to make donated dollars go further.

One example is the Rotary Club of Summerland, which is accepting monetary donations to support recovery from the Bald Range Fire. The club is working with trusted local organizations and will direct funds to areas of greatest need.

Donations can be sent by e-transfer to rotaryclubofsummerland@gmail.com with Summerland Wildfire Recovery in the message.

The Summerland club has also shared that local organizations can often multiply the impact of monetary donations. Their food bank, for example, has indicated that $1,000 in financial support can provide approximately $5,000 worth of products.

Building a District Disaster Relief Committee

To help administer disaster response resources and strengthen our ability to respond in the future, we are also building a District Disaster Relief Committee.

We want representation from across District 5060 and members with a wide range of skills, experiences, and perspectives. Those interested in serving for the next one to two years are encouraged to reach out.

And if you know someone who would be a strong addition to this team, please send us their name. Sometimes the best candidates are the ones who may not volunteer themselves, and we would be happy to contact them directly.

When Rotary members see a need, we step forward.

Across District 5060, members are already demonstrating compassion, generosity, and Service Above Self. I am proud of the way our District continues to respond when our neighbors need us most.

Our immediate needs may look different from one community to another, but our commitment is the same: District 5060 is working to support all of our communities affected by these fires.

DG Jill Leonard