The first award recipients of the new Los Olivos Rotary Club Foundation’s Vocational Scholarships were Clay Madrid of Solvang and Elida Uribe of Buellton. Both are June graduates of Santa Ynez Valley Union High School. Clay plans to become a teacher of vocational and industrial arts and will be attending Black Hills State University in South Dakota. Elida plans to become a photographer and will be studying at Santa Barbara City College.

  Clay and Elida received their awards at a meeting of the Los Olivos Rotary Club with their proud parents, Leticia and Armando Uribe and Glenda Madrid looking on.

  The funds for these first vocational scholarships come from Los Olivos Rotary Club’s program to collect old cell phones. While a few selected cell phones are made available to People Helping People’s program for abused women, the bulk of the phones collected are resold to wholesalers to raise scholarship funds. The Chairman of the Scholarship Committee, Dr. Allan Pacela, said “It continues to amaze me that something as simple as collecting old used cell phones can help these deserving youth along their career paths. By collecting these old phones, we also properly recycle electronics, help PHP, and raise scholarship funds! We believe in these youngsters, as they are our collective future. We hope that someday they will be able to pass along the small assistance we provide here and make their own significant contributions to society.”

  Rotarians are local business men and women and professionals who do service work in three areas: community service, international service, and vocational or educational service. Rotary, which has over 1.3 Million members worldwide, recognizes “the worthiness of all useful occupations; and the dignifying of each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society.” Because of this basic principle of Rotary, the Foundation’s Scholarship Committee unanimously decided to award vocational scholarships.