Vocational Service

Literacy

Rotary Readers is our Literacy program for children from Kindergarten through the 3rd Grade. With a roster of 40- 50 volunteers, we work in concert with the Bainbridge Island School District, deploying 24 volunteers each week to four schools, providing over 44 hours in one day of mentorship, impacting somewhere between 88 to 105 students. Over the course of the 13 week program we will provide 572 hours of volunteer mentor service to students.

Volunteers in the program include Rotarians, city personnel from both the Police and Fire Departments, and some of their staff, the City Manager and other city staff members, retired educators as well as many other retirees and at-home parents. Following School District guidelines and goals, classroom teachers work with the mentor, identifying those students who need the most help.

With the 40+ community reading volunteers running smoothly in the schools, this year, the Literacy Committee has expanded its reach beyond the elementary classroom.

Helpline House: Beginning in the fall of 2024, we began stocking Helpline House with early elementary age-appropriate new books for clients to take home. These are intended to help the Helpline House community build their own family libraries with picture books, early readers, and bilingual books in Spanish and English. Two committee volunteers regularly monitor and restock these baskets noting the bilingual books are especially popular.

Additionally, we are working in conjunction with an Eagle Scout to build a kid-friendly Little Free Library on or near the Helpline House grounds. We anticipate this will be a self-sustaining fixture for donated children’s books for the Bainbridge Island community.

Dictionary Project: One member of our committee had a successful experience with the Dictionary Project in Hawaii. This non-profit is dedicated to getting third grade students their own dictionaries to help enhance their literacy skills, thus becoming good writers, active readers, creative thinkers and resourceful learners. The District director of Teaching and Learning found third grade teachers thrilled to participate and dictionaries were purchased and distributed in December and January.

Career Exploration

Since 2015, the Career Exploration Committee (CEC) has been dedicated to providing career exploration opportunities to middle and high school students.

Some of our programs include:

• Careers and Conversations: an opportunity for students to gain information from various professionals. The program consists of two parts: small group discussions between Rotarians and students interested in their fields, and a series of panels with Rotarians in related professions, such as medicine and technology.
• CTE Winter Student Internships: under the program, one or more Bainbridge and Eagle Harbor High School students will spend 2.5 hours per week for 6 weeks at a participating Island employer to learn about what they do, how, and for whom. The students will meet with different employees who represent the separate, distinct careers embedded in the enterprise. The final week includes a debrief that focuses on lessons learned from the students participating in the program.
• One of the best, most popular BISD CTE programs are field trips during which students visit a company, agency, or organization for several hours to learn what they do and how, and the careers embedded in their operations. The CTE staff handles this program, but has asked the Career Exploration Committee to provide financial assistance in covering the transportation costs associated with each trip. For the coming school year, the CEC also has agreed to support Job Shadow Days and the Beyond BHS and Explore Days.

Murdock Scholarship: In 2024 the CEC established the Murdock Construction & Engineering Scholarship, named after visionary club member Roy Murdock, who was instrumental in propelling the Career Exploration Committee’s work forward. Murdock’s dream was to interlock the high school program with trade school, two-year college, and four-year college/university level programs as well as apprentice or internship opportunities. In May 2024 and with the help of the club’s Scholarship Foundation, the CEC awarded its first two scholarships, and looks forward to doing so again in May 2025.

Environmental Committee

The Environmental Committee was formed in 2021 after Rotary International made the environment a new focus area. Protecting the environment is one of the club’s strategic priorities for 2024 -2027. The committee’s mission is to promote environmental stewardship in our community through education, partnership, and action. To accomplish this, we are involved in the following:

Greening our Club
On-going efforts to promote environmental stewardship include minimizing waste, encouraging the use of reusable water bottles at club events, and eliminating the use of single-use plastics. In addition, we host three to four environmental speakers every year.

Greening the Auction
We work with the Green Team to ensure they are integrated into all aspects of the Auction. Specifically, we are working with the Green Team to:

• reduce emissions from idling cars;
• increase the number of harvesters and gleaners;
• improve overnight gleaning;
• manage the intake streams to minimize waste;
• develop metrics to measure progress over time in meeting the 3P’s – profits, people, and planet; and
• work closely with Bainbridge Disposal.

Greening the Community
We meet regularly with local environmental and conservation groups (e.g., BI Land Trust, BI Parks and Trails, EcoAdapt, Islandwood, and Sustainable Bainbridge) to discuss how we can best support their programs and projects. We have been involved in providing resources and Rotary volunteers for the 2023 Electric Vehicle Fair and 2024 Electrification Expo at Woodward Middle School. We have participated in the last three Island wide Earth Day celebrations.

We provided funds for Sustainable Bainbridge to complete three projects:

1. reduce our collective impact on the environment from over-consumption of new fabrics and clothing;
2. organize fix-it-fairs for the public to reduce landfill waste; and
3. support the Bainbridge High School Garden club to build a food growing garden.

Collaborating with Other Rotary Environmental Groups
We have reached out to different Rotary Environmental Groups such as the Environmental Services Rotary Action Group to reduce plastics in the environment, the Community Action for Fresh Water, and the Salish Sea Environmental Group. We work with them to discuss how to increase collaboration in grants and programs.

Partners For Work

Partners for Work (PFW) was developed by the Auburn Rotary Club in 2003 with the goal of creating employment opportunities for people with developmental disabilities by utilizing Rotarian business leadership as a vital link between job candidates and paid work. The target population is young adults with developmental disabilities who have valuable skills to offer the workplace. This group’s employment rate (30%) is very low; many cannot meet the established job requirements set by human resource departments within businesses. Rotarians can play a key networking and leadership role in helping open the door towards paid work.

Bainbridge Island Rotary Club hired our first PFW greeter in 2019, and have enjoyed the participation of several fine young people. They have all been personable and asked and remembered important details about our members. They learned the process of setting up and taking down the meeting room and assisting the greeter committee during meetings. As each gained confidence, it would became clear to them and the PFW committee that it was time to seek more challenging employment, which they all have done.

As part of PFW, Bainbridge Island Rotary Club also conducts mock interviews one or two times a year with young developmentally challenged pending graduates of the Trillium Employment Service program who need practice interviewing for a job. The mock interviews enhance these young adults’ ability to interview effectively.