Since it began in 1992, North Whidbey Sunrise Rotary has been helping people. Its scholarships, community programs and behind-the-scenes help has provided people with opportunities to smile, at least for a day.

The morning Rotary sponsors scholarships for people wishing to continue their education at Skagit Valley College as well as high school students pursuing a four-year degree.

“I didn’t have an appreciation of how much they meant to people until I had a chance to (present them),” Club president Mary Anderson said.

The first challenge for the newly formed club was taking over the Challenge Series, a gravity car race for children with special needs. The club inherited the event from Puget Power in the 1990s.

In an effort to clean up Oak Harbor, the Rotarians chose to install the Mutt Mitt stations. The simple contraption of a brown baggy stapled to a piece of cardboard is responsible for taking care of the evidence that the city’s parks are shared with pets.

Eric Anderson, the club’s charter president, said that the clean-up program is a real handful.

“It’s a real project too — there’s a lot of use of those things,” Eric said.

Even though they get up early in the morning to share their wisdom, the sunrise Rotary members spend long days making sure the people of North Whidbey have help when they need it.

The club has assembled toiletry kits for the North Whidbey Help House in Oak Harbor. It has also provided supplies for the Red Cross baby sitting classes. It has helped build homes for people who aren’t privileged enough to afford to do it themselves through Habitat for Humanity.

The morning club’s biggest challenge began only recently, however. Realizing that Rotary International’s 100th birthday is fast approaching, the club wanted to tackle a task bigger than itself. The club’s members made a list of top priorities of which groups to help. The top two were children and clean water, so the Rotarians are combining the two and are bringing clean water to a village in South America.