Donate
Every year we offer our riders a chance to support the good work Rotary does in the community with a separate donation. This year we’re taking it a step further by allowing riders to choose which projects their donation supports. The three areas are outlined below.
Education
Books for Third Graders. Every year, every third grader in Santa Rosa public schools receives a National Geographic Book of Why. Rotary members deliver more than 1,700 of these colorful and informative books to 30 elementary schools in Santa Rosa. The books are intended to spark children’s interest in the physical world around them and incorporate reading into their lives.
The project began 25 years ago with the “Rotary Dictionaries for Kids” project and has evolved into the current project.
Books for Life. Because love of books and reading is a habit best acquired early, in the coming year the Santa Rosa Rotary Club will be joining with the Dolly Parton Foundation in a unique program to provide 1,000 children one book a month for the first five years of their lives. With your help e hope to grow the program in future years until every child born in Santa Rosa benefits.
Scholarships, The Rotary Club in conjunction with Rotary Club of Santa Rosa Foundation awards approximately $30,000 for tuition and supplies to help Santa Rosa Junior College and other students achieve their educational goals.
Scholarships are awarded to support students studying Civil Engineering, Business, Education, Health Science, Career and Technical, Business, Communication or Marketing, Business and Entrepreneurship, Engineering, Agriculture, Business & Education, Legal Studies and more.
International Projects
- Project Amigo grew from an effort by two Rotarians to help the children in a poverty-stricken village in the state of Colima, Mexico. The project offers incentive programs to needy 4th, 5th and 6th graders in rural communities in the Colima area designed to encourage them to stay in school. It also provides educational and health services to children in a migrant labor camp in Queseria. A scholarship program started in 1996 has grown from offering seven junior high school scholarships to providing 110 scholarships a year for junior high, high school and university.
- The Rwanda School Project. Five Rotary clubs helped by paying for the latrines, the water catchment system and the installation of the solar power system. Rotary International and Rotary districts matched the funds raised by the clubs. The Lutheran Church sponsored the project and raised the money for the rest of the school project
- A water treatment system in San Vicente de Colonche is a small rural village of 300 in Ecuador. The sole sources of water available to this village are an adjacent irrigation canal or the unacceptable option of spending a significant portion of family income of $250 to $300 per month to purchase water from a vendor.
- An upgraded water system in Bonita Oriental, a remote mountain community of about 60 people in Honduras (near Trujillo).
- Ongoing support for ShelterBox program, which responds instantly to disasters all around the world delivering aid as quickly as possible to the people who need it most. In the 11 years since ShelterBox was founded, they have responded to almost 200 natural or manmade disasters in over 75 different countries and provided lifesaving aid for well over one million people.
General Charitable Fund
In addition to the educational and scholarships mentioned elsewhere we also:
- support vocational training for underserved members of our community through training grants.
- support seniors through our Christmas carol social program.
- support food insecure families through coordination with the Salvation Army and Redwood Empire Food Bank
- support our local police and firefighters through our annual public safety awards program
- support junior college youth through our Rotaract program
