Lots of news for our Optimist Club, Jr. Optimist Club, and KidSmart Program
!Keep scrolling down, down, down for more news and photos!
FABULOUS NEWS! Lety Klein, a member of our San Jose club, brought a woman to meet me that had a donation from another person and wanted to talk about our programs. Therese said that Lety told her that a school needed sheets. We had already obtained sheets for the Palo Escopeta School from Jim Page, owner of Mission Industries in Las Vegas. I told her that our immediate need is the plane fare for 4 kids to go to Mazatlan again this year, to the Sea of Cortes Encounter week of ecology studies and fun at the Aquarium in Mazatlan. The government pays the rest. I had just put 8,734.80 pesos on my own credit card yesterday morning, and was going to ask our club to pay for the 3 kids from KidSmart Cabo going, and the San Jose club had to pay for their one student going. As it turns out, this donation is proceeds from a casino party Mr. Edwards Hopple gave recently, and the amount is EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS! Do YOU believe in coincidences?
Also, Therese wants to join our San Jose Optimist Club, which is growing by leaps and bounds.
As we previously announced, the Opera Guild’s fundraiser produced over $5,000 for our English Program!
Harmon Hall has given us a one year scholarship! We can use it for one student or use it to pay any student one month at a time.
Brian Brewer & Jéssica Flores came down to visit us from the Optimist International offices in St. Louis, MO, and brought a championship St. Louis Cardinals tee-shirt for our mayor (we’ll take it to him next week) and awards for the Cabo Club as an Honor Club of having more members on Sept. 30, 2006, than we had on Sept. 30, 2005. Actually, we went from 25 to 48 members!
We also received the Hare and the Tortoise award for pulling ahead with members at the very end of our Optimist year, Sept. 30.
Thank you again to ALL our members; the members who have stuck with us and worked hard over the years, and the new members who have joined us recently to help us BRING OUT THE BEST IN KIDS!
Jessica and Brian also accompanied us on our whale watching tour & Brian took these pictures:
Kids & members from both clubs Araceli, Maribel, Lupita, and Juana
Kids Going to Mazatlan March 4 - 10
From KidSmart Cabo: Victor Hugo (Ricardo’s Brother), Javier, & Liliana,
Marlen (chosen by municipality, not in KidSmart)
& pink shirt is Jocelyne from KidSmart San Jose.
KIDS TO MONTREAL!
We are taking Alejandro, president of the Junior Optimist Club, and Jazmín, the secretary, with us to MONTREAL! They will attend the Junior Optimist Convention while we attend the adult convention, but we will help with some of the Junior convention events too. The kids will stay with other kids; separate rooms for boys and girls of course but we will be in the same hotel and one of us will be with them almost all of the time. Miroslava Bautista has agreed to be their chaperone on the airplane and help at the convention. Fernando and I got special tickets through Charles Helfrick on American Airlines and Yolanda and her husband Odiseo are also going. He may be able to get some more coupons at the special price of $750.00 per person round trip Cabo-Montreal. Because we can’t get American visas for the kids, they will fly with Miroslava to Mexico City and then directly up to Montreal.
Kids from left to right: Jazmín; Ruth peeking behind her; Alejandro in back; red shirt is Alberto; Antonio; Carlos; and Benito in the cap.
ICF SCHOLARSHIP SEMINAR IN LA PAZ FEB. 12-13
Miroslava, front right
Miroslava Bautista and I attended a seminar in La Paz Feb. 12 & 13 about scholarships in Mexico sponsored by the International Community Foundation (ICF). Also attending were two women from Liga Mac in San Jose del Cabo, 2 from the Palapa Society in Todos Santos, women from FANLAP ( a group helping kids) in La Paz, a man from the Mulege Student Scholarship Program, 2 women from Puerto Vallarta, 2 women from the East Cape Guild in Los Barriles, a man an a woman from Project Amigo in Colima, a woman from the Fundacion Internacional de la Comunidad in La Paz, and a member of COVDE in La Paz, a group that holds meetings in various neighborhoods to teach community awareness to residents (mostly low income families). It was very interesting and the coordinator, Amy Carsteneen of ICF, kept using our KidSmart programs as a example to all. We learned a lot of valuable tips and one thing that was brought up that stuck with Miroslava and me is that when kids start to fail, instead of just asking the kid what is going on, it is a good idea to go or send social workers to the homes and talk with the parents to see what is going on in the family. We do that sometimes but it is not standard procedure for us and we realized that we may be able to save more kids and keep them in the program with early intervention. See the ICF website at
www.icfdn.org. it is QUITE involved to even find us in there but if you click on Initiatives and then Give2Baja and then Baja California Sur, THEN Los Cabos, THEN Optimist Club Cabo San Lucas, THEN they make you sign up to log in, but we are in there! There is a donor at Misiones del Cabo here in Cabo San Lucas who has donated $5,000.00 to our English program through ICF, so that is how this all came about. It could be a source of other donations to us in the future,and the educational opportunities are wonderful. An individual donor paid for this entire seminar so that all of us could attend absolutely free.