BWI Rotary Club
The BWI Rotary club is committed to supporting and improving kindergarten through 12th-grade education in the North Anne Arundel County Feeder System. According to the club’s web site, BWI Rotary believes that education is the path to peace and understanding, both in the local community and around the world.
The club contributes through annual projects, including giving dictionaries to third-graders in the area and organizing food and shoe drives in cooperation with local partners. Its members also support student and youth leadership by mentoring North County High School’s Key Club in leadership programs and in community service projects.
One of the BWI Rotary club’s most recent projects was raising nearly $10,000 to be able to donate 10 iPads, a docking station and a MacPro computer to Park Elementary School’s Reading Intervention Program earlier this year.
Internationally, the club participates in Books for International Goodwill (B.I.G.), a project founded by a neighboring Rotary club, as well as contributing to the ongoing PolioPlus campaign lead by Rotary International.
www.BWIRotary@gmail.com
Howard West Rotary Club
The Howard West Rotary club is a new provisional club that was established in January 2013. It is a Happy Hour club, meeting at Turf Valley in Ellicott City, and is “looking to engage the next generation of Rotarians as well as engage the local businesses who are interested in supporting the community,” said club President Chuck Walsh.
The club already has participated in Rebuilding Together and Success In Style (in conjunction with the other Howard County clubs, professional clothing was collected for use by those preparing for their professional start).
The club’s first fundraiser will be held at the Four Season’s Hotel in Baltimore on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013, from 4–7 p.m. The funds will be used both locally and internationally.
Locally, funds will be raised for Health Care for the Homeless in Baltimore, the Domestic Violence Center and the Linwood Children’s Center for Autistic Children in Howard County. The club has a diverse membership, so international projects are also an important part of the club. The international funds will be raised for The Maanasi Project, a mental health project in India started by one of its members, Dr. Geetha Jayaram. The World Health Organization is looking at this project as a model for other countries. More information on the project can be found on the YouTube Video, “Maanasi – Of Sound Mind.”
www.HowardWestRotary.org
Rotary Club of Clarksville
The Rotary Club of Clarksville’s mission is to improve the quality of life in the community as well as worldwide. Its members feel that the best way to do that is through partnerships — with local businesses, organizations and government agencies. Some of those partners include Howard County General Hospital (HCGH), Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center and the Howard County Public School System (HCPSS).
The Clarksville Rotary club has raised and donated more than $140,000 since being chartered in 2004. It has identified nine major areas of need that include: children at risk; disabled persons; health care international; understanding and goodwill; literacy and numeracy; population issues; poverty and hunger; preserve planet Earth; and urban concerns.
The club has focused on several of these needs with numerous programs including a Literacy Project that donates dictionaries to third-graders and, with the other Howard County Rotary clubs, supporting the HCPSS’s Bumble Bee Spelling contest. It also has an ongoing commitment to the homeless shelter through its partnership with the Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center.
The club also sponsors an Interact Club at Glenelg High School for youth ages 14–18.
www.clarksvillerotary.org
Rotary Club of Columbia
Chartered in 1968, the Rotary Club of Columbia has been a very active club and has contributed more than $1 million to local nonprofits and other organizations, including Howard Community College (HCC) and the Howard County Public School System.
The club members also participate in Rebuilding Together, the Loan Closet (founded by the club eight years ago), giving dictionaries to third-graders and working with the Freestate ChalleNGe Academy — a program that provides skills, education and discipline to at-risk high school dropouts. The club also has two scholarship programs: one for high-school scholar/athletes and one for HCC Rouse Scholars to help talented students that are in financial need.
In addition, “Each year, club members suggest organizations providing help to those in need,” said club President Mimi O’Donnell. “Then we consciously spread the spirit and name of Rotary to 15–18 groups through substantial but smaller contributions (typically $500 to $2,500) to those organizations with special meaning to our members.”
The club also contributes to international projects, including giving donations to PolioPlus and the Rotary Foundation. Over the years, involvement in other international projects have included the Maanasi Project, providing mental health care in India; the Starfish School Project in Maceio, Alagoas; building wells in Zimbabwe; helping impoverished students in Brazil; contributing to cleft palate repair in India; and helping communities hit by the tsunami in Thailand and the hurricane in Haiti.
To raise these funds, the Rotary Club of Columbia has several fundraisers. It just held its 47th Annual William Jefferson Memorial Golf Outing; each Memorial Day, it holds a Remembrance Run; and it sells squares in a basketball pool for the NCAA Final Four game. “What makes our club special,” said O’Donnell, “is the cultural diversity, the spirit of friendship and family in everything we do.”
www.columbiarotary.org
Rotary Club of Columbia Patuxent
The Columbia Patuxent Club is a diverse group of professional men and women who are active in the community, both at home and abroad, with emphasis on helping those in need, supporting education and job training, providing clean water, combating hunger and improving the health and lives of as many people as possible.
Members have volunteered their time by serving meals for the homeless at Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center, sorting food at the Howard County Food Bank, assisting at the Police Pace Race, and distributing free dictionaries to more than 1,000 third-graders, in addition to many other programs.
One of the club’s biggest fundraisers is a Night on the Riverboat, where an evening of fun, food, drink, casino games and laughter is enjoyed. The proceeds support health and wellness in Howard County. Some of the charities that have benefitted from the club’s night of fun include: Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Central Maryland; Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of Central Maryland; the Domestic Violence Center; Gilchrest Hospice Care; Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center; HC DrugFree; Jim Rouse Scholarship Fund; and the YMCA of Central Maryland.
In addition, the club also provides some of its proceeds to international programs, such as the Clean Water Project; Orphanages in Colombia; and the Foundation Against HIV and AIDS.
This year’s Night on the Riverboat will be held on Friday, Nov. 1, at Ten Oaks Ballroom. Tickets are $75 each and can be purchased through the club’s web site.
Last year, the Columbia Patuxent Rotary club donated approximately $50,000 to charities, and over the years, more than $1 million have funded local and international projects.
Two other club fundraisers include a World Series raffle with the winning square getting $3,500, and an extremely successful Super Bowl raffle that usually results in multiple boards.
www.columbiarotary.com
Rotary Club of Columbia Town Center
The Columbia Town Center Rotary club continues its partnership with Our House, a program that teaches carpentry skills, workforce readiness and GED preparation to abandoned, abused, homeless and orphaned teenage boys. The highly structured program includes five eight-hour days of hands-on training in carpentry, drywall and roofing, as well as life skills training, academics and therapy sessions in the evenings.
Chartered in 1982, the club has since raised more than $1 million to support local charities and to fund scholarships for Howard County students, allowing them to attend four-year and community colleges.
The club also gives numerous services to local charities and other events throughout the year. Charities it has supported include the Athelas Institute Inc., Our House, Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center Inc., Domestic Violence Center, Patapsco Heritage Greenway, The Samaritan Woman, Conexiones, Howard Community College and the Howard County Boat Float, among others.
www.ctcrotary.org
Rotary Club of Crofton
The Rotary Club of Crofton has its roots in the Bowie-Crofton Rotary club that was chartered in 1969. In April 2001, with more than half of its membership living in Crofton, the name was changed to the Greater Crofton Rotary club and went from a dinner club to one meeting for breakfast. In 2007, the “Greater” was dropped and it is now the Rotary Club of Crofton and still meets for breakfast at Bob Evans in the Village of Waugh Chapel.
As with most Rotary clubs in the district, the Crofton club gives dictionaries to each third-grader in the Crofton area elementary schools. It also has helped to remodel the teachers’ lounge in every Crofton elementary school. A long-time club project is with Sarah’s House, an emergency shelter located on the edge of Fort George G. Meade. The club and its Interact Club (high school students) help celebrate events with the children at Sarah’s House and provide shoes for the children in the shelter.
The Rotary Club of Crofton also works on an international level. In Espirito Santo, Brazil, the club has supported a building in which children can stay before and after school. According to the club’s web site, “strong fellowship among Rotarians and meaningful community and international service projects, like [our] school project in Brazil, characterize Rotary worldwide.”
The club also held a “Fallen Heroes” Motorcycle Ride last year by teaming up with several other organizations to help raise funds for the families of police officers who have died in the line of duty in the state of Maryland.
The Crofton Rotary club has an annual Black and White Fundraiser Gala, and in June of this year, it held a Bowl for a Cure fundraiser with the South River High School Interact Club, raising $5,000 for the American Cancer Society.
www.croftonrotary.org
Rotary Club of Elkridge
This year, the Rotary Club of Elkridge is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its Annual Bull Roast, which will take place on Jan. 18, 2014, from 6:30–11 p.m., at Michael’s 8th Avenue in Glen Burnie.
“We expect the usual crowd of about 700 friends for a night of music, food and fun,” said club President Bill Accardi. In addition, the club sponsors frequent raffles and fellowship outings throughout the year.
The club contributes to important causes throughout the world, but its primary charitable focus is poverty in the U.S. Route 1 corridor from Elkridge to North Laurel. “The Elkridge Food Pantry and the Route 1 Resource Center are our two primary benefactors,” noted Accardi. “In addition, we also give college scholarships and participate in the annual Dictionary Project.”
Chartered in 1948, the Elkridge club has a long history of serving the needs of the Elkridge community.
Contact the Elkridge Rotary at membership@elkridgerotary.org.
Rotary Club of Ellicott City
Every year, the Rotary Club of Ellicott City holds a crab feast. This year, the crab feast celebrated its 66th year, attracted more than 325 attendees and raised more than $12,000. The club is also working with Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center and the Howard County Conservancy on developing a new fundraiser that will be held in the spring.
“Our fundraising goes to fund college scholarships for local area high school students,” said club President Mark Kokosko. “We have three recipients that have four-year, $1,000 scholarships, and we hope to raise that to four recipients.”
The club also has a $1,000 scholarship specifically with Howard Community College and its Service Learning Program; additionally, it contributes to Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center and purchasing and distributing more than 1,000 dictionaries to local third-graders.
“We currently have 31 members and are looking to grow membership,” said Kokosko. The club is also looking to pursue a larger international matching grant over the next few years and is considering two prospective international projects including working with a Rotary club in Boston to help orphaned and at-risk youth in Honduras and “possibly another water project.”
The Rotary Club of Ellicott City continues to support the Build Haiti Foundation with which it has been very active since the hurricane struck Haiti several years ago.
Founded in 1928, The Ellicott City Rotary club was the first Rotary club in Howard County. “We are a social, close club with lots of friendship and fellowship,” said Kokosko.
https://sites.google.com/a/ellicottcityrotary.com
Rotary Club of Glen Burnie
The big project for the Rotary Club of Glen Burnie is giving a college scholarship to a graduate of Glen Burnie High School every year; currently there are four “in the pipeline at any time,” said club Treasurer and Past President Rick Kuethe. “We pick students that have done well in high school, but we also try to pick students that need our help and might not be able to afford to go to college otherwise.”
The scholarship program was started in 1962, and all but one student used the scholarship to graduate. “We have helped some wonderful students who now have their own business or have great careers all over the country,” said Kuethe. “One of our students now works at Shock Trauma; so it’s pretty satisfying for our club.” The student that didn’t use the scholarship turned it down because her mother hit the lottery and she no longer needed it, giving another student the opportunity.
Well-known for its Crab Feast each year, the proceeds from the event benefit the Baltimore-Washington Medical Center (BWMC). Back when it was named North Arundel Hospital, the Rotary Club of Glen Burnie helped the facility with building campaigns, but now the proceeds fund continuing education grants for nurses at the medical center.
The club also hosts a Community Service Awards dinner where, in the spirit of Rotary’s “Service Above Self” motto, select community groups are able to recognize their own members who go the extra mile in serving the community.
“We volunteer at the Big Glen Burnie Carnival, maintain a park in the center of Glen Burnie, donate to NCEON [North County Emergency Outreach Network]; we partnered with other local Rotary clubs to build Arundel House of Hope’s medical clinic,” said Kuethe. And, the club works with Abundant Life Church for Make A Difference Day where it hosts a Christmas Party, “complete with pizza, presents and Santa for local kids who wouldn’t have much of a Christmas otherwise.”
On the international side, the Rotary Club of Glen Burnie was the lead club for a $250,000 project that brought clean water to a town of 3,000 people in Santa Clara, El Salvador.
www.directory-online.com/Rotary/Accounts/7620/Pages/5874/index.htm
Rotary Club of Lake Shore
Chartered in 1948, the Lake Shore Rotary club has remained a small club for all of its 65-plus years. Over that time, its members have chosen to focus their efforts on daily service in the local community.
The club serves lunch at the Glen Burnie Salvation Army once a month and rings the bell for the charity every holiday season. In addition, the club supports the Anne Arundel County Food Bank. Last year, with neighboring Rotary clubs, the Rotary Club of Lake Shore helped secure a $9,000 District Grant for the Cisco Center, which is a nonprofit center serving children and families with special needs.
In the past decade, the club has focused on mentoring high school students through Interact clubs in both Northeast and Chesapeake high schools. The club has funded and distributed a dictionary to each third-grader in Pasadena for the past six years.
Internationally, the club has sent funds and clothes and fulfilled other needs for the Little Brothers and Sisters of Central America, which also covers the Caribbean islands.
The club’s biggest fundraisers are a Spring Crab Soup Cook-Off, and in the fall, the Pasadena Family Fun Day, an activity-filled day of mini-golf, a batting clinic, a driving range and small child activities such as a moon bounce, a rock wall climb, face painting, fingerprint lessons and the opportunity to be a kid fireman for a few hours.
www.rotarycluboflakeshore.org
Rotary Club of Laurel
The Rotary Club of Laurel participates in many efforts to support youth. Two of its members sit on the board of directors for the Laurel-Beltsville OASIS Program, a youth counseling service bureau that focuses on delinquency, truancy, pregnancy and dropout prevention through individual and family counseling. The club also provides some financial aid to the program.
Club members also visit eight local elementary schools each year to distribute dictionaries for the Dictionary Project and provide scholarships to outstanding high school students three times each year (an effort begun in 1969), and send two students to the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) annually.
Chartered in 1958, the Rotary Club of Laurel is also active in support of the Dinosaur Park located in Laurel. The Dinosaur Park has hands-on programs in an enclosed fossil area that allow the public to help find fossils in this rich deposit from the Early Cretaceous period, about 110 million years ago.
Laurel Rotary was the second club to take on the cause of Disaster Aid U.S.A., a Rotary International project that provides “shelter, clean water and hope for survivors of natural and man-made disasters.” For more information on this humanitarian effort, the club requests that you visit the web site www.disasteraidusa.org.
To raise funds, the club holds a Spring Potpourri in May, featuring local artists. In the past, it held an annual golf tournament, and its members frequently attend Toby’s Dinner Theatre to earn additional funding as well as provide a special event for members and friends.
“We are always looking for new people to join with us in our many interesting activities and programs,” said club President Joy Kline. “We help the needy with food and support, plus a wide range of projects in the community.” It takes people to make all of this happen.
Contact club President Joy Kline at joykline@hotmail.com.
Sunrise Rotary Club of Ellicott City
The Sunrise Rotary Club of Ellicott City’s mission is to improve the quality of life in the community by partnering with local businesses, social service organizations and government to help children in need.
For more than a decade, the club’s signature program has been the “Summer Enrichment Program” (SEP), which has provided learning opportunities for more than a thousand low-income, pre-kindergarten children in Howard County and the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE). The project is a partnership with the Howard County Community Action Council where children graduating from Head Start are given a “summer of education and enrichment to prepare them to succeed in first grade.
“This year, with the help of Sunrise Rotary members, family, friends and corporate sponsors, 160 children were enrolled in the program, and the program was extended from five to seven weeks,” said club President John Halt. The MSDE has recognized the club’s initiative as one of the most highly successful community-based initiatives in the state.
There has been “measurable performance improvement for children entering public school as demonstrated by independent assessments,” said Halt. In addition to financial support, “this has been a record-breaking year of enrichment experiences including educational, cultural and recreational with a focus on academic assistance, cultural enrichment, nutrition and exercise and field trips.”
This year, the club took a new and different approach in how it raised money for the Summer Enrichment Program. The program was underfunded, and so the club members “asked individuals, businesses and community organizations to join us in sponsoring one or more students,” said Halt. “Unlike fundraisers where a portion of the funds raised go to paying for the event itself, we offered sponsorships where 100% of the donation went directly to the Summer Enrichment Program.” The results were record-breaking, resulting in an intake of $50,000. This allowed the SEP to enroll more children, for more hours per day, for more weeks.
www.sunriserotaryellicottcity.com
West Anne Arundel Rotary Club
The West Anne Arundel Rotary club holds several fundraisers each year to support its involvement with Sarah’s House, an emergency shelter located on the edge of Fort George G. Meade, as well as educational programs the club is involved with in conjunction with the BWI Rotary Club. For the past 10 years, the club has distributed more than 12,500 dictionaries to third-grade students around the West County area.
For more than six years, the club has hosted a Rotary Club Christmas Party where guests bring an unwrapped gift for Sarah’s House. During the event, “we collect a ton of toys for Sarah’s House as well as monetary donations,” said Mary Groven, president of the West Anne Arundel Rotary club. “We have always tried to help this organization because it’s a great cause and it’s right in our neighborhood.” This year’s party will be held on Dec. 13.
The club also holds a Valentine’s Day Gala, “an elegant evening of dining, dancing and live entertainment,” according to the promotional flier. The event will be held on Feb. 15, 2014, at the Maryland Yacht Club. “It is strictly a fellowship night and is a bunch of fun,” said Groven.
In addition, on April 25, 2014, the second annual Spring Fling Joint Fundraiser will be held with the BWI Rotary Club.
www.waac-rotary.org