Rotary raises Explora! project funds

The Rotary Club of Albuquerque is celebrating its centennial in a signature fashion: by raising $500,000 for new exhibit space at the Explora! museum in Old Town.

Skip Cowan, president of Rotary Albuquerque, said the Explora! project is the latest in a long line of projects the service organization has undertaken to improve the community since the club was chartered on July 1, 1916. Among the projects in which the club has been involved are the paving of Central Avenue from 1st to 8th streets, the city’s first symphony orchestra, the Natural History Museum and the children’s Fantasy Garden at the Botanical Garden. The Explora! project is its largest yet.

“I think it’s a proud moment for every Rotarian,” Cowan said. “What this organization has achieved over the past 100 years is pretty impressive.”

The Albuquerque club was formed with 31 members on June 24, 1916, as club number 242 of Rotary International, with a commitment to the founding principle, “Service Above Self.” The club now has a membership of over 250.

Rotary will kick off a year of celebrations with a picnic at Old Town Farms on Sunday. Later this year, the club will host a “Service Above Self” luncheon to recognize volunteers both within Rotary and the larger community. The celebrations culminate on July 1, 2016, with a gala at Hotel Albuquerque.

The money being raised for Explora! will be used to convert an outdoor deck on the east side of the museum into a 4,000-square-foot exhibit called “Working Together To Build a Village,” which will allow children and their families to design architectural structures using loose building components. It also will have some simple machines like pulley systems and a station where visitors will be able to adjust solar panels to power a string of lights.

Visitors can already use prototypes of some of the exhibit’s elements elsewhere in the museum.

Rotary so far has raised $340,000 of the donation and the museum earlier this month hired an architect, Atkin Olshin Schade of Santa Fe, to design a permanent shade structure, movable soft-panel walls and other elements to make the space usable year-round.

The space and exhibit should be finished by the summer of 2016 — about the same time as Rotary’s 100th birthday party.

Anyone interested in donating should contact Ann Singer at 505-242-2651.

COURTESY OF EXPLORA! Children play among building materials that might be part of a new, $500,000 exhibit at the Explora! museum in Old Town. The Rotary Club of Albuquerque is raising money for the exhibit as part of the service club’s 100th anniversary celebrations.