Events

Dalia Hale has been a member of the Rotary Club of West Sedgwick County – Sunrise since 2007 and has coordinated the Rotary Inter-country Teacher Exchange (RITE) Program since 2010, assisted by former West Wichita Rotarian Shelli Kadel. The RITE Program facilitates teacher exchanges between the United States, Panamá, and Argentina to support English education. This program is financially supported by the West Wichita and Sunrise Rotary clubs and involves host families from our area Rotary clubs.

Retired from a long career in education — including classroom teaching, administration, and adjunct faculty work — Dalia has also served as a RITE outbound teacher in 2016 and 2019 where she conducted teacher seminars for English instructors. In 2025, she traveled to Panamá with our outbound RITE teachers to implement program improvements.

Today, Dalia will share a report on her recent visit and discuss the future of the RITE Program.

Paige Koeppen is the Chair of the Rotary Satellite Club of West Wichita - Service.  She worked as a counselor at Clark Davidson Elementary School in Goddard, KS for 33 years.  While there, she started Grandparent’s Luncheon, she was a mentor to young teachers, coordinated many different social emotional programs, and ate lunch with every child in the school throughout the year. She learned every name of all 500 students by October of every year.  The "7 habits of Effective Kids" were one of the programs that was taught to teach children kindness, perseverance and many other important qualities. She is thrilled to continue making the world a better place through her membership in Rotary. 

Our club’s first Soup Luncheon took place on April 25, 2000, with the goal of raising funds and awareness for Hunger Plus, Inc., a non-profit relief agency dedicated to providing food and essential supplies for emergency situations and, for longer term projects, to improve food security — a project supported by Rotary International. The money we saved by not eating lunch at RHCC for that meeting was directed toward sponsoring shipments of dehydrated soup from the Breedlove Dehydrated Foods facility in Lubbock, Texas.

Initially, we prepared bags of the dehydrated soup for our luncheon, which, although nourishing, lacked flavor. To enhance the experience, John Mosley proposed a Soup Contest for the following year, inviting members to bring their own creative soups using the dehydrated mix as a base. By 2006, we evolved our approach, allowing our talented “chefs” to showcase their favorite soups without the mix.

Over the years, this event has transformed from a simple soup cook-off into a full-fledged soup, chili, and dessert competition with members casting $1 votes for their favorites, raising a few extra dollars for the project. In 2017, we decided to shift our donations from Hunger Plus, Inc. to local organizations, such as the Lord’s Diner and Paxton’s Blessing Box. Another recent recipient has been ShelterBox who is focused on disaster relief and have now become the established beneficiary of our proceeds, largely due to the fact of our close connections since they are a Rotary International Project Partner.

Come help us raise funds for a good cause. Bring one dollar bills to cast votes for your soups & desserts.

A big thanks to Mindy Wagner & Christy Barnett for organizing this project again this year and to all of our chefs:

Crockpot of Soup: Jodi Barnwell, Jacob Beckman, Meliss Hamilton, Paige Koeppen, Colin McKenney, Rick Oglesby

Crockpot of Chili: Ed Frey, Lesley Hazleton, Misty Jack, Colby Reynolds

Dessert: Roger Bowles, Meliss Hamilton, Carol Molz, Sondra Stieber, Lori Taylor, Fe Vorderlandwehr

Bread, Rolls or Crackers: Bob Beumer, Gregg Greenwood, Vern Klassen

If you signed up to bring a food item, please arrive  by 11:45am so we can get it all arranged to start the buffet line at noon. Don’t forget to bring a serving utensil.