As mentioned, I am living in Montevideo as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar. To get here I had to go through three levels of Rotary applications and approval: city, district, national/international. For those of you who do not know, Rotary is the world’s first service club organization. Its more than 1.2 million members volunteer their time and talent to further the Rotary motto, Service Above Self.
My sponsoring club is the Las Vegas Rotary Club. It is the oldest club in Las Vegas and with the help of Karen Whisenhunt (probably the most active Rotarian on earth) they sponsored my nomination for District approval. My sponsoring district is District 5300, which is comprised of counties in Southern Nevada and portions of LA County and San Bernardino County. The District now has 63 clubs and about 3000 members. I interviewed with the District back in 2006!
After District interviews my application was sent to Rotary International for final acceptance. RI administers Rotary’s educational programs. Ambassadorial Scholarships are probably the Rotary Foundation’s oldest and best-known program. They were founded in 1947. Since then, nearly 38,000 men and women from about 100 nations have studied abroad under its auspices. Today it is the world’s largest privately funded international scholarships program. Nearly 800 scholarships were awarded for study in 2005-06. Recipients from about 70 countries studied in more than 70 nations.
I am honored to be apart of such a distinguished history, and to be sponsored by such a fantastic host of people.
To learn more about my host district, check out their website, as well as the website of my Rotaract club, Paso Molino.
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