Community briefs

Rotary’s Global Elegance

Cupertino Rotary is set to host its Global Elegance fundraiser on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. at a private Los Altos Hills home. This event has raised funds for the club’s international global grant projects such as pediatric surgeries in the Philippines, domestic violence shelter in Ecuador, teacher training in rural Taiwan and water well drilling in Kenya.

The event features gourmet ethnic foods, fine wine and music and is open to guests interested in becoming a Cupertino Rotary member. Event chair Alysa Sakkas says the fundraising goal is $20,000.

“This year, we have a goal to support a global grant project focused on Rotary International’s newest area of focus: the environment,” Sakkas adds.

Tickets are $175 at https://www.givsum.com/ opportunities/global-elegance-701d2e2fd.

Middle school plastics challenge

Four local middle school students were named the winners of the 10th annual S^4super Summer Science Search on Aug. 15. A free program run by the Cupertino Library Foundation’s Teen Advisory Council, made up of students from Fremont Union High School District, S^4 aims to engage and inspire Cupertinoarea middle school students in science-related subjects.

This year’s focus was plastics in one of four areas: use, reuse, recycle or innovate. First-, secondand third-place winners each received $100-$300 in prizes.

Ashmit Kachhawa, an eighth-grader at Cupertino Middle School, won first place for Plastic Imagination, a 3-D printer filament maker that reuses plastics for 3-D printing. Ashmit’s classmate Matthew Leung took second place for the All-in-one, an Ai-enabled trash can that automatically sorts recycling.

Fellow Cupertino Middle School eighth-grader Mugdha Shinde teamed with Namya Bhargava, an eighth-grader at Chaboya Middle School in San Jose, to create Plastino, a reverse recycling vending machine for easier recycling.