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.

Donna Warnes has submitted her application to join the quickly growing Rotary Club of Three Creeks.

Warnes has history with Rotary, having been an Interact support person at Union High School where she helped the students participate in community clean up projects, and Earth Day. Other projects they worked on include Shop with a Cop, gathering blankets and distributing them to homeless, and wrapping Christmas presents.

She recently retired after 28 years working for the Evergreen School District as a paraeducator. She worked in special education and assisting in learning support. She worked hard to encourage students to complete their online classes needed to graduate and to pass their general education classes as well.

Donna has worked as a licensed real estate agent and has worked for Boeing.

She loves spending time with family, friends and helping people. She also enjoys music, reading and "hanging out with my book club ladies", comedy shows, boating and gardening.

Donna is married ans has two children and two small grandchildren.

After coming to visit our club while her grand daughter Melanie presented to our club during the last meeting of 2023, Patti Wiseman decided we're pretty cool and has applied to join the Rotary Club of Three Creeks.

Wiseman has a very interesting background including family, career, travel, culture and volunteerism. She's been married for 40 years and raised three daughters. She's now grandmother to five grandchildren. She spent 45 years working as a registered nurse making a true difference in many lives. After retiring five years ago, she found great satisfaction in volunteer activities and now is ready to make a stronger commitment to "giving back" by joining Rotary.

Travel, especially when combined with volunteerism is one of her passions. The year she turned 50, she participated in a medical mission trip to Guatemala. She also recently spent 31 one days on the island of Sicily for a "true cultural immersion".

The outdoors is Patti's happy place, walking her dogs, taking grandchildren to the beach, exploring new locales and going "anywhere my feet can go and doing anything my hands can do: I'm there," she says. 

Patti said she also enjoys reading a good book, sipping a little whine and eating something delicious as favorite ways to spend an evening. If it involves a book club meeting with friends, then even better. She cherishes her time with family and feels blessed to be able to have them all so near so that she can be active in their lives on a daily basis.

Patti's sponsor into the club is Laura Miller.

Veteran Rotarian George Middleton, CFA, CPA has applied for membership in the Rotary Club of Three Creeks.

In addition to his many years in Rotary -- as a member of the Rotary Club of Vancouver and a charter member of the Rotary Club of Vancouver Metro Sunset -- George packs a ton of life experience.

George is an avid tennis player, a seasoned cruise passenger and a wonderful English language partner to a young Vietnamese boy on the street. He also love to share about having worked as an intern at NASA, doing computer programming, and working as a controller and a home builder.

George is also a principal at Middleton & Company a financial planning firm in Vancouver.

President Kinsey is expected to conduct George's first reading is at our January 4 club meeting, and his second reading at the club's January 18 meeting, followed by a membership vote by the club's board of directors.

The Rotary Club of Three Creeks and Santa's Posse have enjoyed a seven-year partnership that's included toy collections, financial donations, volunteerism to wrap gifts, pack bags and deliver gifts across Clark County over the years.

This year, the club stepped up its efforts even more.

By virtue of a matching grant from Rotary District 5100, and $2,500 of the Rotary Club of Three Creeks Foundation, the club delivered a total of $5,000 worth of toys to Santa's Posse on Tuesday, Dec. 12.

Three Creekers Sue Simon and Wendy Wright spearheaded the delivery of gifts to Clark County Sheriff John Horch at the Clark County Events Center.

"Many thanks go out to Sue, Wendy and to Brian Heimbigner - who wrote the grant," said Club President Kinsey Dhoot. "It makes me and the other fabulous members of our club to be a part of helping make sure kids across Clark County get toys at Christmas.

"Our club has a long history of support for Santa's Posse, and this year we were able to do just a little bit more."

Dhoot also thanked Three Creeks member Nancy Docekal who chairs the grants committee for Rotary District 5100 and helped approve the club's grant proposal to maximize giving to Santa's Posse.