Salazar shares humanitarian experiences

ALAMOSA — The Rotary Club is known for doing good things around the community and around the world, and member LeRoy Salazar is a good example of that mission.

Salazar first joined Rotary in 1995. In his 23 years, Salazar has been working with Hope of Children Foundation and has been involved with Santa Maria del Mexicano orphanage in Queretaro, Mexico since the ‘90’s.

Some of the members of the local club and members around the community have also gone there to help with the projects.

Salazar made a presentation about his work with Santa Maria del Mexicano to the Alamosa Rotary on Monday.

The projects they have worked on teach children and give them the experience and education they need to get a job once they are old enough.

More recently, they have created a sewing room and a welding shop for the children there.  The sewing room teaches youth how to make clothes, curtains, etc. The welding shop has volunteers who come in and show the correct ways to weld if the youth would like to pursue a job in welding.

Other projects are improvements in areas where cows are milked. Instead of just washing down the cows in the same area where they get the milk, volunteers created a runoff for a cleaner zone.

Salazar said he was planning a trip there sometime in November to see how things were going and continue ongoing and new projects.

In the future, Salazar said they want to continue with the welding project and expand into carpentry, mechanics, bookkeeping and more. They want to build a computer room as well. Along with these, they want to expand the agricultural side with dairy, meat and gardening.

“The number of kids who grew up come back to teach and help,” said Salazar.