Santee-Lakeside Rotary Club Celebrating its 60th Anniversary
Now in its 61st year, The Santee-Lakeside Rotary Club was chartered on June 9, 1965, and services the communities of Santee and Lakeside. The club is led by President Eric Saretsky. Eric is a very eager president and has made many professional contacts sharing the story of Rotary to anyone who will listen. He can be reached at eric.saretsky@gmail.com.
The club meets the 2nd and 4th Thursdays at11:30 AM for lunch and networking and 12:00 PM -1:00PM for its meetings. They meet at Lantern Crest Senior Living - Theater Room - Main building, 300 Lantern Crest Way, Santee, CA 92071.
Membership
The club has 24 active members and two honorary, one being a charter member of the club. The club is actively recruiting members. The age range is 50-80, representing both professional and retired individuals eager to serve the community.
Key Focus Areas
Its key focus areas are serving the vulnerable population, youth and seniors. These efforts are coordinated by the club's Community Service Committee. This past Rotary year, this small but mighty club conducted 26 service projects and two international service projects supporting these key focus areas.
Signature Project
Santee-Lakeside Rotary Club's signature project is the STAMP OUT HUNGER FOOD DRIVE.
Several years back, when Santee-Lakeside Rotary club learned of the Stamp Out Hunger food drive the post office conducted each year, it wondered if they could persuade the post office to donate collected items to Santee’s food bank so that all food collected would remain in the community, serving its vulnerable population. Thus started a partnership with the post office, Santee-Lakeside Rotary Club and Santee Food Bank. The club took the leadership role in arranging for volunteers and securing transport to take items from the post office to the food bank. This year was the largest haul seen by the post office in years.
Here is what the effort looked like:
From the moment the first postal trucks rolled back into the Santee Post Office, Rotarians were ready. As each truck returned from its delivery route, club members jumped into action, unloading bag after bag of donated nonperishable food. Bins filled quickly, carts grew heavy, and muscles were put to the test as volunteers pushed fully loaded carts up the ramp and into a 16-foot rental truck waiting to transport the donations.
Trip after trip, the rhythm continued — from post office to food bank, from food bank back to the post office — a steady flow of generosity moving through the hands of people determined to make a difference. At the Santee Food Bank, volunteers were standing by to unload, sort, and prepare the donations for storage in the warehouse housed on a local church campus. Every can, every box, every bag represented a neighbor helping a neighbor.
By the end of the day, tired arms and dusty shoes couldn’t hide the smiles. The community of Santee had donated an extraordinary 19,760 pounds of food — nearly ten tons of support for families facing food insecurity.
What made the day truly remarkable was the chain of compassion that made it possible: residents who gave generously, postal workers who collected every donation, Rotarians who moved mountains of food, and the Santee Food Bank team who will ensure it reaches those who need it most.
It was community helping community in the purest sense — a circle of care that begins and ends with kindness.
Youth Services
The Club now has two Interact Clubs - one at Santana High School and the other at West Hills High School both are unique and are very active. One member of West Hills Interact is also a charter member of the newly formed District Interact Club Council. These clubs do service on their own but also participate when they can in the club's service projects. Both clubs were started by individuals who first attended RYLA and who came away wanting to make a difference. Sheri Saretsky is the youth chair for our club and can be reached at ssaretsky@gmail.com.
Club Foundation
The Santee Lakeside Rotary Club has a foundation - the Santee-Lakeside Foundation, founded on November 19, 1990, and was primarily set up to support an on-going scholarship program for at risk youth who maintained good grades and wished to pursue a trade school and/or community college. With state laws now paying for community colleges, the club foundation's bylaws were changed to be used for other areas benefitting the community, including scholarships, youth programs and a community grants program. This Rotary year the foundation allocated $20,000 which will be dispersed between 14 non-profits meeting the grant criteria, two of which are international.
Social Media
The club has a Facebook account - Santee-Lakeside Rotary and an Instagram account - Santee Lakeside Rotary (@santee-lakesiderotary). Its website is: https://santeelakesiderotary.org/.