The third-grade class of Temple Ner Ami will host the Friday night service at 7:30 p.m. March 20 at the temple, 4098 Calle Tesoro, Camarillo.

Students, under the direction of teacher Karen Dworsky, will lead the service with prayers, plays and prose.

A kosher-style potluck dinner will be held at 6 p.m.

For more information, call (805) 388-3824.

Art sale

Ventura College will hold its annual Art Etc. Yard Sale from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Mon., March 9 between buildings CRC and SAB on the campus, 4667 Telegraph Road, Ventura.

The motto of the sale is "Your junk is another's Picasso." The event is sponsored by the Ventura College Friends of the Arts, a nonprofit subsidiary organization of the Ventura College Foundation.

The organization will take donations of all things related to art from 10 a.m. to noon Sun., March 8 in Room SAB-1 on campus.

For more information, call Ventura College public information officer Alisa Moore at (805) 654-6462. Engineering award winners

Port Hueneme Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center recently announced the winners of its 2009 National Engineers Week "Engineering Challenge."

Balboa Middle School in Ventura won first place. Santa Rosa Technology Magnet School in Camarillo won second place, and Los Primeros Structured School in Camarillo won third place.

The competition was held on Feb. 19 at Naval Base Ventura County and pitted 15 middle schools in a contest to build the best "missile" from household objects such as foil, water bottles and Popsicle sticks.

Each school's team consisted of five students, a math or science teacher and an engineer from the warfare center. Rio School District

The Rio School District recently announced that Tim Blaylock of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Oxnard and Port Hueneme is now president of the board of trustees and Ron Mosqueda is clerk.

Blaylock was elected to the board in 2006 and serves on several committees related to children's issues in Ventura County. He is the chief professional officer of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Oxnard and Port Hueneme.

Mosqueda has served on the board for 10 years and before joining was involved in the community through local sports and after-school programs.

The Rio School District encompasses six elementary and two middle schools and the Community Day School. There are more than 4,300 students in the district.

For more information, visit www.rio.k12.ca.us.

Rotarians travel to Thailand

Camarillo resident Max Copenhagen and Oxnard resident Nina Kobayashi will spend a month in Thailand as part of the Rotary Foundation's Group Study Exchange program.

They are two of five people chosen from Rotary District 5240, which includes Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Kern counties.

The group will leave Wed., March 11 for Northern Thailand, where they will stay with fellow Rotarians and serve as ambassadors from the U.S.

Copenhagen will serve as the team leader. A member of the Camarillo Rotary, Copenhagen was stationed near Bangkok, Thailand, 38 years ago when he was in the U.S. Army. He recently retired from a career in the U.S. Forest Service and hopes to see smallscale forestry operations in Thailand.

"I would love to see a big elephant pulling a giant log out of the woods," Copenhagen said.

Kobayashi, a branch manager at Santa Barbara Bank & Trust, grew up in Oxnard and recently earned a master's degree in education from UC Santa Barbara.

"The most difficult thing thus far has been trying to learn some of the language," Kobayashi said. She described it as "beautiful, yet complex," and said she hopes to return from the trip with a better grasp of the language.

The team has met monthly since September to prepare for the trip.

The other team members are Sergio Reyes of Bakersfield, and Dana Goba and Liz Werhane of Goleta, Calif.

A blog about their experiences is available at the website gsetriptothailand.blogspot.com.