Impact Areas

 

Each year our club hosts an annual wine dinner which raises over $25,000 in direct scholarship funds for the Willbern Heritage Scholarship Foundation. To date, we have raised over $125,000 in scholarship money. One of our Foundation's missions is to promote the higher education of graduating seniors who demonstrate both academic and civic competence through work or internship. Well-deserving recipients are awarded $3,000 scholarships. Eligible seniors must attend one of the following high schools: Bellaire, Lamar, Westbury, Sharpstown, or Wisdom.

 

The Bellaire / SW Houston Rotary supports Living Waters for the World with monetary grants from our Foundation, as well as physical support from our club members who make near annual international trips to areas in need to help install clean water wells. 

Some 80 percent of the world - that's roughly 1.3 billion people - lack access to an adequate water supply, and in developing countries, collecting water can be an all-day process. Villagers will walk great distances to the nearest stream, which is usually polluted and disease ridden. This water then is poured into rusty and contaminated containers and carried or rolled back to the village.

Bellaire / SW Houston Rotarians have made numerous trips with Living Waters for the World to help improve the quality of life in many areas of the globe, including in Haiti, several areas in Mexico, and Pakistan. We are proud to be part of this global humanitarian effort. 

 

Alongside, Rotary International, the Bellaire Southwest Houston Club has been working to eradicate polio for more than 30 years. Our shared goal of ridding the world of this disease is closer than ever.

Rotary International was a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, where we've reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent since our first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979.

We've helped immunize more than 2.5 billion children in 122 countries. So far, Rotary has contributed more than $1.8 billion toward eradicating the disease worldwide.

Today, polio remains endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. On August, 25, 2020, the World Health Organization declared Nigeria free of the wild Polio virus. But it’s crucial to continue working to keep other countries polio-free. If all eradication efforts stopped today, within 10 years, polio could paralyze as many as 200,000 children each year.

 

The Bellaire Southwest Houston Rotary Foundation, Inc. has awarded many grants over the years, both domestically and internationally that support Rotary's seven focus areas: 1) Fighting Disease, 2) Promoting Peace, 3) Providing Clean Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, 4) Maternal and Child Health, 5) Environment, 6) Community and Economic Development, and 7) Basic Education and Literacy.