Program July 20 2012

Spenser reported,  I am proud of the work my executive did to help grow our membership in the club.  We had 2 of the original 10 members I started my term with resign in October of 2011 so we actually increased our membership by 8 members.   Each Interact President declares an area of focus for their community fundraising projects.  I have always been passionate about kids having food to eat so I focused on and donated to the Salvation Army Food Bank.  Major Roland Murphy loves to see us coming and we are very proud of our continued support of this very necessary community service.  We donated 1339 cans and or packages of food.

In November we organized a clothing drive and donated the 72 bags of clothing collected to the Salvation Army to sell.   Once again we did one of our favourite annual events, Christmas carolling.  We then donated $250 to the Salvation Army Food Bank to purchase Christmas food for families and we donated $300 to Bethesda House to buy toys for children staying with them.  In May of this year we held a charity yard sale and raised $479.86 and then donated $500 to Epilepsy Durham Region. 

Snap Clarington has always been a great supporter of our club in exchange for event coverage and advertising we provided a free fun fair for the children attending the 2012 Newcastle Home and Trade Show.  We donated $100 to prizes and supplies for this event.  We now have community organizations’ approaching us for assistance and or partnerships and that makes it all worthwhile.

We were able to lend a hand to our Courtice and Bowmanville Rotary partners with 3 events this year.

In April we volunteered to assist the partner Spring Cleanup project, in June we volunteered 32 man hours to the Bowmanville Rotary Ribfest and on July 1 we entertained the kids of Clarington with activities at the Courtice Rotary’s Canada Day in Clarington.

In 2010 our club started partnering with the Rotary Club of Courtice as members of their Terry Fox Marathon of hope team.  In 2011 we had Interactor Connor Visser step up to cut his hair for the Locks of Love program and raise money for team Courtice Rotary.  This effort afforded him the honour of officially starting the race by sounding the Fire engines.  In addition our club also accepted a partnership with OPG and manned their water station at the 5 KM race mark.

Too many of our club members have been affected by the loss of loved ones from Cancer.  Since the Charter of our club in 2009 this has been our major Health initiative focus.  As you can see we took team spirit to a whole new level.  We organized a bottle drive and collected pledges from family and friends to raise this amount.

We were thrilled for the opportunity to partner with both the Courtice Rotary and the Dr. G. J. MacGillivray Public School EarlyAct Club on their Purple Pinkie Project.  Our club is looking forward to initiating this project at our individual Secondary Schools this year.

I am proud to announce that our club qualified for the Changemaker Award in my Presidential year.  There are 10 possible areas that a club can qualify in and 5 must be completed to qualify.  We completed 8 and will receive this award along with a Presidential Citation at the District Conference in Richmond Hill this October.

I cannot thank the Rotary Club of Courtice enough.  The opportunities that your club provides to the youth of Clarington through Interact and Rotary are greatly appreciated.