Rotarians from the Rotary Club of Three Creeks recently completed a local service project benefitting 88 foster children and their families in Clark County.

The Rotarians purchased $4,000 worth of gifts for the foster children, wrapped them, and delivered them to a holiday party held at the Vancouver Elks Lodge in Vancouver. The holiday party included Rotarians serving a served a catered meal from Olive Garden, holiday gifts, raffle prizes, and photos with Santa, Mrs. Claus, and the Grinch.

The support for foster children came from $2,000 from the Rotary Club’s Foundation, plus a $2,000 matching grant from Rotary District 5100. Rotarians were able to purchase gifts based on their ‘holiday wish list’ requests for children at Target.

Club members then wrapped all the gifts and transported them to the annual holiday party organized by the Community and Family Service Foundation. CFSF is a non-profit organization dedicated for foster parents and the abused and neglected children they serve. The Rotary Club of Three Creeks partnered with the CFSF, Vancouver Elks Club, Hillcrest Nazarene Church and Fort Vancouver Lions Club to support foster children during the holidays.

Sue Simon, Rotary Club of Three Creeks Service Project Director organized the Rotary club’s involvement.

"As a former foster Mom, I can tell you that every little thing the community does for these kiddos helps them feel like they are cared about," Simon said. "They often feel forgotten and left out, but events like this let them feel like they are cared for and allows them the opportunity to be joyous in the moment.

​"To just be happy children who get to run and play and twirl on the dance floor. They got to meet Santa and the Grinch and an elf. The weight of the reality of their situations was lifted for an evening and it was beautiful."

President Elect Chuck Green has completed and prepared his slate of officers and board members for the 2026-27 Rotary year.

Club bylaws require two postings/readings of the proposed slate of officers and directors prior to the club voting, so this is the first posting. Readings will occur at club meetings in November and voting will open on the club website following the second reading.

The proposed slate is as follows:

• President: Chuck Green
• President Elect: Diana Smith
• President Elect Nominee: Gladys Juenger
• Secretary: Michele Petrick
• Treasurer: Diana Smith
• Sergeant at Arms: Marta Gray
• Membership Director: Patti Wiseman
• Public Image Director: Amanda Braman
• Service Projects Director: Laura Miller (co-chaired by Sue Simon)
• Club Administration Director: Carol Mackey
• The Rotary Foundation (TRF) Director: Tom Markos
• Immediate Past President: Kristi Straight

Service club to be led by President Kristi Straight during the 2025-26 year

Leaders of the Rotary Club of Three Creeks have assumed their new positions, effective July 1, 2025.
 
Kristi Straight has literally received the leadership baton from Immediate Past President Ryan Hart and will serve as club president through June 30, 2026. She will lead a slate of officers and directors that include the following.
 
President: Kristi Straight. A native of Vancouver and graduate of Hudson’s Bay High School’s class of 1986, Straight is a charter member of the Rotary Club of Three Creeks.
 
President Elect: Chuck Green. Another charter member of the club, Green recently retired as public works director in the City of Ridgefield.
 
President Nominee: Nelson Holmberg. Also a Hudson’s Bay class of ’86 graduate, he’ll be serving his third term as club president in 2027-28.
 
Secretary: Michele Petrick, a veteran Rotarian having served in the Rotary Club of Camas-Washougal before coming to Three Creeks, is serving her first term as club secretary.
 
Treasurer: John Jay is a third-year member of the club and in his second year as club treasurer.
 
The remainder of the board, serving in director positions, are: Immediate Past President: Ryan Hart; Service Projects Director: Sue Simon; Sergeant at Arms: John Sandstrom; Public Image Director: Amanda Braman; Club Administration Director: Carol Mackey; Membership Director: Patti Wiseman; Rotary Foundation Director: Garry Lucas.

CLARK COUNTY, Wash. – The Rotary Club of Three Creeks Foundation has opened its 2025 grant application period, with its focus on nonprofits that serve those experiencing hunger or homelessness, as well as at-risk youth.
 
Applications are due by midnight June 30, 2025.
 
The Rotary Club of Three Creeks, which determines its foundation’s areas of service are currently working through a strategic plan that identifies hunger, homelessness, and at-risk youth as its priorities for giving, as well as first choices for service projects executed by the members of the club.
 
The application for these grants is posted on the club’s website (https://www.rotaryofthreecreeks.com/charitable-giving.html), where guidelines for the grant applications can also be found.
 
The Rotary Club of Three Creeks Foundation ("Foundation") exists to foster, develop, promote, and encourage the health, education, and general welfare, focusing primarily on the residents of Vancouver and Clark County.
 
The Foundation will also consider requests for funding projects which are approved by Rotary International.
 
The Board of Directors of the Foundation, responsible for allocating the funds to promote its purposes, will be guided by these Grant Guidelines and the Rotary Club of Three Creeks’ Strategic Plan in making grants for the Annual Community Programs Fund.

Are you interested in a true hands-on international experience with Rotary? CFP – Creating Friendships for Peace – is an organization that pairs teens from the divided island of Cyprus to build friendships across Cyprus’ UN-controlled buffer zone and learn lifelong peacebuilding skills. CFP has partnered with Rotary for many years and teens have been hosted by numerous District 5100 Rotary families. CFP also works to build peace between Israeli/Palestinian teens, but they are hosted on the East Coast.

Important dates: CFP is looking for home hosts for two teens approximately July 1-21. The deadline to apply to host students is March 31. The agenda is well established for the program – you only need to provide housing, friendship, meals, and transportation. We will have a speaker about this program in April but if this sounds interesting, please talk with Sue Coates. She has hosted students three times now and can answer many of your questions.

The Rotary Club of Three Creeks continues to attract new members, as Gladys Juenger has applied for membership!

Gladys is from the beautiful beach town of San Carlos, Mexico and the third of four siblings. She grew up playing competitive tennis and spent 14 years in an only-girls catholic school - no, she did not become a nun. From an early age, she was curious about how things around her worked and how these were built, so she became an engineer. She earned her BS in Industrial Engineering in Mexico.

She came to the USA to learn English as a second language, as the place where she grew up is a retirement place for Americans and Canadians, and she wanted to have conversations with her neighbors. She then moved to Tucson, AZ to pursue her graduate studies, and graduated (twice) from The University of Arizona. First, with a Master in Science in Mechanical Engineering (2014). In Summer 2015 she took a well deserved Eurotrip to Spain, France, Germany, and Switzerland. Then she graduated with a Master in Science in Engineering Management (2016). Gladys was an instructor at the University of Arizona for eight years; this experience ignited her passion for supporting students to reach their potential.

She moved to Lake Oswego in late 2017 for career purposes in the medical devices industry and to be close to family; well, the last did not last much, as her sister moved to California after one year she got here… buh-bye! She was a workaholic from 2017-2020 - so not much to share except boring engineering stuff but at least she grew in her career.

Fast forward... She hiked and backpacked almost every weekend in 2021. Her great accomplishment was to summit Mt. Bachelor. Then, her then boyfriend-turned hubby motivated her to pursue scuba diving and she earned her cert in Spring 2023 in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

She recently moved to Vancouver when she married her better half, Todd Juenger, on October 30, 2023 in Kona, Hawaii. She took a sabbatical and has tried golfing a few times but still no spark for this sport - she decided then to be the golf cart driver while sipping wine watching her hubby play. In her sabbatical, she has sharpened her cooking skills, tried DIY crafts, gardening - killing at least a dozen of tropical plants, and hiked on weekdays (yei!). Also, attended hubby’s social events and conferences (love these if they serve good wine), and took a few engineering courses (as her brain was asking for challenging things). She is 100 percent ready to go back to being an engineer though.

She loves dogs but has a funny and talkative yellow crown Amazon parrot named Lulu that loves the taste of her husband's skin - Todd now has a beautiful scar in her back. Fortunately, Lulu has not experienced Todd’s great roasting skills and is still alive. Lulu has been with her for almost 20 years. Gladys’ happy place is nature; either the ocean or hiking/backpacking the beautiful Pacific Northwest. However, hubby prefers to sleep cozy, so car trips have replaced hiking, hotels instead of tents and beds instead of sleeping bags.

Gladys has accumulated 10-plus years of experience in the medical, alternative energy, SMT/PCBA and semiconductors industries, as Senior Process Manufacturing Engineer and Lean Mfg. Leader.  She won the Technology Rising Star at the 2021 Women of Color STEM Conference while working at Abbott and the 2022 Professional of the Year Award from the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) National, given to outstanding engineers who have made a difference among K-12 and university students through advocacy, support for STEM and mentoring in Oregon and Southern Washington.

Giving back is close to her heart. She has volunteered and served on the board of different non-profit organizations in her community. Since June 2023 she has volunteered at Meals on Wheel, Luepke Center in Vancouver, WA. In Spring 2022, Gladys volunteered her time and technical expertise for the OSU Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, as a judge in the Launch Academy Competition, OSU Next Great Startup, and InventOR Collegiate; programs hosted by Innovation X. She also volunteered for the 2022 Portland State University Cleantech Challenge. She was on the board of the Lake Oswego Transitional Shelter Ministry (LOTSM) from 2020-2022 to help families transition from homelessness to a dignified life. She served for two consecutive years (2021 & 2022) as the president of the SHPE Oregon Chapter, leading the chapter to win for the first time ever an award. Under her leadership they won the 2021 SHPE Blue Chip Award, given to chapters that are growing solidly and making an impact in their community, and the 2022 Chapter of the Year during the annual national SHPE conference in Orlando, Fla.

CLARK COUNTY, Wash. – More than 100 hospitals have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine, severely limiting medical treatment for civilian population in many of the cities, towns and villages in the war zone areas. Clark County’s own Rotary Club of Three Creeks is doing something about it.
 
“Rotarians are ‘People of Action’, and while we can’t necessarily help out on the ground in Ukraine, we’re doing something to help those who need it,” said Rotary Club of Three Creeks President Kinsey Dhoot. “I’m so proud of how we’re putting funds raised locally to work, combined with investments from other area clubs and Rotary International to provide critical medical care to those living under some really scary circumstances in Ukraine.”
 
The Rotary Club of Three Creeks is one of 18 clubs in District 5100 – along the Columbia River from the Oregon Coast to the Idaho border, with its northern-most clubs in Battle Ground and southern-most clubs in Stayton – that participate in an international grant to help pay for portable medical facilities in Ukraine.
 
The 18 clubs contributed a total of $26,300, while District 5100 supported with $20,000 and The Rotary Foundation granted $16,000. The total $62,300 was enough money to support one medical unit and in partnership from another district fund a second unit as well.
 
“The Rotary Club of Three Creeks has the honor of being the international club to coordinate the US clubs and districts in fundraising and honoring commitments,” said Three Creeks Rotary International Chair Brian Heimbigner, who has carried most of the load completing the work on these medical units.
 
Each unit has trained doctors and nurses able to treat most simple to medium civilian medical needs including child birth. For more complicated ailments and surgery, they can stabilize patients before air or ambulance evacuation. Each unit has medical and dental equipment installed so that two patience can be treated at the same time. They are air conditioned and heated and have an emergency generator as well as a water purification system. They are also hardened to withstand nearby lesser explosions and small gunfire. They are towable using just an SUV or pickup, eliminating the need for heavy duty equipment and can be rapidly relocated when the military directs.
 
The medical unit supplied by the Rotary Club of Three Creeks and its District 5100 partners has been deployed to Mykolaiv, on the front line.
 
More than 100 hospitals have been damaged or destroyed in Ukraine through the war, which obviously limits access to medical treatment for civilians in many cities, towns and villages within the war zone.
 
The idea for these portable medical units started with two Danish businessmen – members of the Rotary Club of Lviv International (Ukraine). They developed the project, obtained support from Rotary International, designed the units and located a fabricator in western Ukraine out of harm’s way. They then coordinated the partnerships between clubs and districts in Ukraine, the United States and Canada. The large majority of the funds to build and equip the units is spent inside Ukraine, with the exception of some medical equipment that’s sourced from other European countries.