SERVICE ABOVE SELF LIBERTY LAKE C E N T E N N I A L R O TA R Y This spring, a group from the Liberty Lake Centennial Rotary Club is heading to Honduras in partnership with Pure Water for the World. While there, these Rotarians will install water filtration systems, teach basic hygiene and deliver books, school supplies, new school uniforms, hygiene items and fun things for the kids. Everything has been donated by the club’s local members, as well as the Post Falls Rotary Club, Columbia Bank, and many friends and community members. This will be the second trip to Honduras for club members Chris Choate and Cheryl Woods, who have organized this trip and procured an international grant from Rotary which covered the cost of the water filtration systems. Across the country, more than 1 million people lack access to improved sanitation, 638,000 lack safe water and many of these are children who are missing school due to sickness from contaminated water. This trip is just one of many projects the active club of approximately 30 members is involved in. The annual Memorial Day Breakfast at Pavillion Park resulted in the club being able to donate all proceeds to the local Inland Northwest Honor Flight to send seven local veterans to Washington D.C. to visit the memorials built in their honor. The club’s largest annual fundraiser, the RIM Ride held every September, was started by Rotary’s current President, Mandy Desgrosellier, and raises funds for local causes such as the HUB 360 program, college scholarships, Friends of Pavillion Park, Special Olympics Washington and a number of other local non-profits connected to Rotary’s mission.
Cheryl Woods of the Liberty Lake Centennial Rotary Club visits with kids during a 2017 trip to Honduras. State Farm agent Emily Osborne is the incoming Liberty Lake Rotary president in June and will be celebrating 20 years with State Farm this year. “I moved to Liberty Lake to open a scratch Agency here almost 12 years ago and was so focused on starting this business that I ended up buying a condo in 20 minutes,” Osborne recalled. “That’s when I met Mary Duncan at Liberty Closing & Escrow, who invited me to a Rotary meeting. I had no idea what Rotary was but thought it would be a good distraction, a way of getting insurance off my mind for an hour a week, but it’s turned out to be so much more. Rotary is simply amazing! I wish more people knew all the good in the world they do — promoting peace, fighting disease, providing clean water, sanitation and hygiene, saving mothers and children, supporting education and helping to grow local economies. How can you not get behind that? I really do love what I do at State Farm and am so grateful for my customers and for a career that allows me to be a part of Rotary, and to give back to my community and the world. It’s a passion I am very proud to be a part of.” For more on Liberty Lake Rotary, visit portal.clubrunner. ca/1811. For more on Emily Osborne’s State Farm agency, see ad on page 35.
GENERATIONAL IMPACT Marissa Youngers (pictured at left with daughter, Chandra) knew a little something about the team at Meadow Wood Children’s Center before placing her child into their care. She attended MWCC as a school-ager in the 1990s with her younger brother, Trevor. Fawn Dunn is the director of Meadow Wood Children’s Center, a family business she has been a part of since July 1995. She remembered
Marissa well when she came to tour the facility with her husband as an expectant mother before Chandra was born. “Chandra started in the infant room at Meadow Wood Children’s Center when she was 3 1/2 months old,” Dunn said. “She is now in our toddler class and is doing wonderful.” For more on Meadow Wood Children’s Center, see ad on page 27.
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