The Rotary Club
Of
A Service Club For Our West-Island Community
We are active within the community providing much needed help to
organizations and individuals directly or through our
charitable foundation ROTAIDE.
Moreover we promote excellence in our youth by
offering several scholarships and programs. Here are some of the projects
we are
associated with and contributing to,
some of which are on a
recurring
annual involvement:
Our aging West-Island community was in dire need for a palliative center, now that it is built, our contributions to the palliative care centre represent about one third of all our fundraising. We are proud to help the centre provide the very essential service it is giving the west-islanders.
One of our contributions is the donation of a beautiful Gazebo where Patients and there family can relax.
What happens to abused wives and children? What can they do to escape a potentially lethal relationship? The West-Island Women's Shelter provides a safe haven that allows these women and their children a shelter, support and therapy to get rid of their dependence on an abusive partner. We support their efforts by our contributions.
Christmas is the best time of the year, well but not for everyone; some go hungry or are depressed because they cannot provide for their family what everybody else is enjoying. While we cannot solve this problem for all needy families, we try to provide, to as many families as we can, a well garnished Christmas basket. Frankly we are rewarded with huge smiles and expressions of happiness and relief that make our own Christmas more enjoyable. We recently started the Christmas Ham fundraising to help the W.I. Community.
We usually contribute to support the VON (Victorian Order of Nurses) who provide a much needed help to an aging community in the form of palliative care and assisted living.
In
July 2004 & 2005 we held blood drives, volunteering to help Hema-Québec in
their blood collection in Kirkland, we learned that the shelf life of blood is
about 5 days and the current stock-pile of blood in the province is at about 2.5
days, we realized how vital it is to keep the effort of blood collection going
continuously and without delay, we are proud to contribute our time and effort
to help securing the gift of life.
We install ''Life-Line'' units which offer safety and security to seniors, living alone or left alone for extended hours. Since they are thus reassured that in case of an emergency, they can with a push of a button on a bracelet, alert staff of The Royal Victoria Hospital to an emergency situation requiring immediate action.
We are also proud to contribute to the following causes:
Cheshire Home
West Island Intellectually Handicapped (W.I.IH.)
Sun Youth
Brian Yuan
CPAR
Trans-Canada Trail
While the West-Island community is generally affluent, that is not always the case in some neighborhoods. Some schools experience a striking phenomena, some hungry kids come to school, their level of understanding, interest and learning is undermined by their hunger, so we initiated and are sustaining yearly a lunch program, called ''Food for Thought'' whereby we provide the school board with funds to pay for healthy lunches to needy kids involving the participation of Rotarians to serve the food or to interact with the students.
In memory of one of our Past Presidents, Allan Liddiard, every year we hold a public speaking contest, promoting excellence in
public speaking as well as academic achievements
and contribute generously to
the
winner and to the coffers of the winner's school.
World Understanding and peace, a main tenet of Rotary, is
promoted by Youth
Exchange.
We sponsor West-Island students to go and
live to study abroad for a year and on the receiving end we host a student from
abroad to come live and study here with us.
Lately we had students from Germany
and sent students to Brazil.
To better understand the impact of such an exchange you
must read this email
by one of our exchange students.
We founded an INTERACT club in W.I.C. (West-Island College).
We never envisaged such a great success and such a great
enthusiasm, in its first year the West-Island College Interact Club managed to
undertake many projects for the benefit of the W.I. community such as Bike
collection marathon, toy collection, Xmas party, Doughnut drive and so many
other projects and we expect them to continue to be a beacon of hope and a model
for today's youth. Please visit their web-site:
http://www.westislandcollege.qc.ca/ , they also adopted some International
projects like in El-Salvador.
In CEGEP the students pay for their books, some of which can be very expensive, especially the technical manuals. One of our members spearheaded a John Abbott Book Fund, through our yearly contributions John Abbott College purchases the books for the use of the needy students.
We are also proud to sponsor and contribute to the following youth projects:
R.Y.L.A. (Rotary Youth Leadership Award).
Adventure in Citizenship promoting knowledge and pride in our Canadian citizenship.
Adventure in High-Technology exposing our youth to state of the art advancements in High-Tech.
Ambassadorial Scholarship, allows a post-graduate to continue his/her education in another country of their choosing (up to US$16,000).
Safe Halloween in plaza, with police from station #1.
Youth Exchange Sugaring-Off party is a tremendous opportunity to gather the 50-60 youth exchange students from all the clubs in the district to share, enjoy and exchange their experiences in a fun filled overnight and a typical Québécois Cabane à Sucre.
Our past involvement or contributions to an organization does not mean that we will continue to do so in the future. Yearly we assess our resources and try to match them to the many needs of our community.
