We’ve got two excellent youth service projects we’d like to share! One is working with Conejo Valley High School seniors and the other with a middle schooler that has an excellent passion project!

For several years we’ve sponsored our local Conejo Valley High School Interact. These young adults are not what most people think they are. Some of these students come from very challenging backgrounds without transportation to school. Others have basic needs that are not met and do not allow them to have an environment to grow. For example, some of the students must care for their siblings, thus they fall behind in academics in other high schools in the Conejo Valley.

Conejo Valley High School (CVHS) offers these students a solution. CVHS works with these young students and gives them the care and flexibility to progress based on their schedule and unique challenges. Throughout the years we have worked with CVHS and recognized CVHS can use additional help. The last couple of years the high school has needed additional funds for their senior sweatshirts.

We did a fundraiser through our drive-in movie event and were able to raise $500 in funds to help CVHS purchase these graduate sweatshirts. On March 25th we organized a Club meeting to introduce Conejo Valley High School Interact students to all Club members. The students shared their experience at CVHS and the high school senior sweatshirts we helped to sponsor!

Our second exciting story is for a passion project a local middle schooler collaborated with us on! On April 12th at our Club meeting, we met with Lindero Canyon Middle School student, Carolina. Carolina graciously spoke in front of our entire club and shared her desire to help others have access to books and learn to read.

Our Club was so inspired and we helped to finance the entire project and provide books for the literacy project called Little Free Library. Little Free Library is a 501 nonprofit organization that promotes neighborhood book exchanges in the form of a public bookcase. The free library encourages the love reading our community. What’s great is books in other languages are to be added to the library and the Rotary logo on the side of the book distribution box too. We are speaking with Carolina’s mother and it appears they are on their way to creating a second Little Free Library!