The Lakeway/Lake Travis Rotary Club celebrated its 25th anniversary June 22. Part of an international nonprofit organization, the group is founded upon the principle of “service above self” and is a way for community professionals to help those in need both locally and globally.
Club members meet every Thursday at noon at High 5, 1502 S. RM 620, Lakeway, in the Oaks at Lakeway shopping center. Members are admitted by invitation and sponsorship, but anyone is invited to visit the meetings.
“We’ll assign [potential members] a sponsor if they need one,” said Kristine Shelstad, the newly elected Lakeway/Lake Travis Rotary Club president.
The group plays an active role in the community by sponsoring its annual Lake Travis ISD Special Olympics Banquet, giving more than $450,000 to Lake Travis High School students for vocational career training and college scholarships, and raising $50,000 for the Lake Travis Community Library meeting room.
After Rotary donated to the library five years ago, Library Director Morgan McMillian became a club member.
“[Rotary members] were just so insanely generous to the library; it felt like a group I wanted to be a part of,” she said.
The club sponsors Rotary-based Interact clubs at Lake Travis High and Hudson Bend Middle schools. Rotary mentors students and helps them implement charity projects, Shelstad said.
The group's new project includes providing prosthetic limbs to African children.[/caption]Projects worldwide
To date, Rotary International is a major contributor to the eradication of polio worldwide. In 1979, global club members took on a project to deliver the vaccine to more than 6 million children in the Philippines. Rotary has since contributed more than $1 billion toward the eradication of the disease, which is now confined to five countries.
The Lakeway/Lake Travis club has a new project underway providing 3-D printed prosthetic limbs to children in Tanzania, Africa.
“We can see this project turning into the next polio project for Rotary,” Shelstad said.
Partnering with Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, the club sent 3-D printers with special filament for the sockets to Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, where local trained technicians can put them to use.
“You can scan the leg and print out [a prosthetic] for less than $100,” Shelstad said. “It totally changes the life of that child and their family.”
Growing Lakeway’s Rotary Club
The Lakeway/Lake Travis Rotary Club hopes to attract more members and focus on additional projects in the community, Shelstad said.
“This year’s theme is ‘Make a difference,’” Shelstad said. “We want to be more visible in the community and invite anyone who’s interested in serving the community to hook up with us and see what’s going on.
“Rotary’s great because it’s not political; it’s not religious; it’s very accepting and open. No matter your age or profession or where you are in life, there’s a place for you in Rotary.”
Members helped create water wells in Tanzania.[/caption]
