Niwot Rotary marks decade of community service

The Rotary Club of Niwot celebrated its 10th anniversary on Dec. 18 with a holiday dinner held at 1914 House.

On hand to commemorate the milestone were several of the group’s founding members, including Kamla Chopra, Dennis Daly, Matt Dolan, Marty Wehr, Scott Stockert and Jo Kirkenaer, a Norway native who has been deeply involved with the international service organization for nearly 40 years.

Kirkenaer, the club’s treasurer, was pleased with turnout for the event, and even more pleased with the club’s accomplishments during the preceding decade.

“We started off as a small group, with a focus on giving back to the community, and it’s amazing what we’ve been able to do,” he said of the club, which currently numbers around 20. “The Rotary’s slogan is ‘Service above Self,’ and that’s what it really comes down to.”

Rotary International was founded by a Chicago businessman in 1905 and today boasts more than 1.2 million members in 35,500 clubs worldwide. It has a lofty mission—“to provide service to others, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace”—but has achieved some impressive results on the ground in its fight to make the world a better place. For example, since launching its PolioPlus program in 1985, the organization’s efforts have helped nearly eradicate the disease worldwide.

The Niwot club got its start in 2008 and has since been instrumental in a number of local events and projects, most notably the annual Wine, Cheese and Chocolate gala, which raised money for Longmont Meals on Wheels back in May. The Rotary also conducts Niwot Clean Up Days, the 4th of July “bike clinic,” and the fall Oktoberfest celebration (though that was on hiatus last year). Earlier this year, club members installed the Little Free Library in Niwot Children’s Park, and, in past years, the RCN conducted an extensive clean-up of the Niwot Trail trailhead, and repainted the Caboose in Whistle Stop Park.

Disaster-relief is another of the group’s specialties, and for the RCN, those efforts are usually championed by Kirkenaer himself, a disaster survivor three times over. Currently, he is heading up the local effort to collect donations for families displaced by the November wildfires in northern California, and also heads up the group’s work with ShelterBox USA, an organization started by a Rotary International member that provides emergency shelter and other relief supplies to displaced families around the globe. To date, the RCN has sent out 15 of these boxes, to locations such as Haiti, Nepal, and the Philippines.

“One thing that really intrigues me about Rotary is that everything starts at the grassroots level,” he said. “The Rotary International never tells us what to do….It’s single clubs and single Rotarians that make things happen.”

The Rotary also aims to promote education, so the RCN also works closely with the area schools. At Niwot High School, members work with students through the Interact Club, Student of the Month program, and through an exchange student program. In March, Rotary members head to Niwot Elementary School to participate in Read Across America, a national event held on Dr. Seuss’s birthday.

“I feel that when you do things like this—promote literacy and promote education—you’re also promoting peace,” Kirkenaer said. “It’s the aspect of giving back to the community, of helping your fellow man, of doing something good.”

Kirkenaer said that the RCN is looking forward to another ten years of serving the Niwot community, and hopes to grow its membership so they can take on bigger and more elaborate projects. “There’s always things like that to do, and I’m sure people could use our help for a lot of things. We just need to have that channel of communication open to see where we can step up and do things. A little elbow grease is a good thing.”