Article by PP Kero O'Shea, Membership Voice Coordinator

The Rotary E-Club of Western Australia (E-WA) has a key project in the WA Wheatbelt called the Love of Reading, aimed at encouraging kids to read as much as possible. Reading enhances literacy, which in turn improves educational outcomes and leads to success in life.

Several years ago, my Rotary club conducted a strategic review and found that:

1. Some of our goals aligned with the strategic plans of local governments in our communities, with both focusing on youth development.
2. We needed young people—particularly those at the schools we supported through our Love of Reading (LoR) program—to participate in fundraising for LoR.
3. The Rotary Youth Program of Enrichment (RYPEN), designed for ages 14-17, was extremely popular among young people, and we needed to improve pathways to RYPEN.

Our first step was to use the popular RYPEN program as an incentive to encourage local teenagers to support and fundraise for the Rotary Love of Reading project, primarily through our annual Swim for Reading event in Bruce Rock. We then met with the Shire councils to discuss how we could help them meet their strategic commitments to youth development while also supporting their local schools through the Rotary LoR project.

The response to both initiatives was incredibly positive. Now we have strong local ownership of both the Rotary Love of Reading project and the benefits of RYPEN.

And the relationships continue to develop...