NWOC Turns Important Corner in Serving Our Communities

"We have programs that Optimist International provides--primarily scholarship competitions for middle and high school students," says Club President Frank "Corky" Frederick.  "But we also have some new ideas to help where we can."

 

Working Together Benefits All

 

Our newest community partner is Albuquerque's Fire Rescue Station #18 in Taylor Ranch.  Beginning

in September 2018, we're creating ways in which we can help each other to help our community.

 

NWOC continues our partnership with Marie Hughes Elementary School with several programs that barely started at the end of the school year in 2018:

 

• the Izzy Juarez Keep Up the Good Work Award for Super Citizens--discussed last year and implemented this year,

• Bike Safety Rodeo,

• Supplies for School Success--tissues, copy paper....

 

We also are reconnecting with the Albuquerque Institute for Mathematics and Science (AIMS) at UNM, a charter secondary school, where we will do our best to recruit contestants for our Optimist International Essay and Oratorical Contests.

 

NWOC's also seeking partnership with the Albuquerque Police Department with whom we will quarterly recognize outstanding police officers.  This is a program currently operating in the Old Town Optimist Club, The Optimist Club of Albuquerque, and the Sunport Optimist Club where the program was initiated many years ago.

 

Very near and dear to our Club is the Hugh O' Brian Youth (HOBY) Leadership Seminar, which our club was instrumental in reinstituting in New Mexico in 2012.  We returned the HOBY leadership seminar to Albuquerque in 2013. Thanks to our NWOC members, we were able to donate over $20,000 to HOBY-NM in 2015-2019.

 

Let's remember, too, our support of the Optimist Youth Camp at Camp Shaver in the Jemez.  This extraordinary week away each summer for underprivileged sixth graders was started by the Evening Optimist Club.

 

Most recently, NWOC also joined in the great work the Optimist Club of Albuquerque is doing on behalf of children with cancer.  NWOC sponsored a watering station at the 2018 Pediatric Oncology Project's first annual walkathon and is participating in the planning of the 2019 walkathon where we again will host a watering station.

 

As our club grows so will our abiliity to invite more schools to participate.  

 

Growth Follows Opportunity

 

As our communities grow, so does the need for more community service volunteers to help the young, old, and in between. The club was chartered in 1976.  The need and the opportunities have not lessened.  Perhaps, the need is even greater now. The NWOC was formed by the Optimist Club of Albuquerque Optimist Club in response to the growth on the westside.