Rotary serves local community and beyond
The members of the Rotary Club of Oshawa-Parkwood have been busy serving the local and world community during the first half of the Rotary year.
In an effort to focus on the relevant issues of the day in and around Oshawa and beyond, the Rotary Club of Oshawa-Parkwood heard from many community leaders at their regular weekly meetings.
Locally, the Rotary Club of Oshawa-Parkwood, together with the Optimist Club of Ajax, the Whitby Lions Club and the Durham Regional Police Service reopened the newly renovated and expanded Kids’ Safety Village of Durham Region, and also hosted the Halloween Haunt in October and Christmas at The Village.
The Rotary Club of Oshawa-Parkwood, together with many other Rotary clubs in Durham Region, recently committed to a major donation to Durham College’s Centre for Collaborative Education, which opened in October 2018. The new three-storey facility, a legacy project tied to Durham College’s 50th anniversary, brings together local, Indigenous and global communities, providing a new home for several of the college’s innovative and ground-breaking programs, including the new global classroom, from which the Rotary Clubs of Oshawa and Oshawa-Parkwood, hosted and broadcast a livestream World Polio Day event to the world on Oct. 24.
During this worldwide broadcast, the Rotary Club of Oshawa-Parkwood, along with the Oshawa Rotary Club, and the other 10 Rotary clubs in Durham Region, were awarded certificates, by Mayor John Henry, the other Durham Region mayors and Regional chair Gerri Lynn O’Connor commemorating World Polio Day in Oshawa, and throughout Durham Region.
The Rotary Club of Oshawa-Parkwood, along with many other Durham Region rotary clubs, also committed major funding to the construction of a new facility for Grandview Children’s Centre, which will create more treatment spaces, shorter wait times and a modern facility so that families can access the care they need sooner.
Through a grant from the Rotary Foundation, the Rotary Club of Oshawa-Parkwood has partnered with the Rotary Club of Whitby-Sunrise and the Rotary Clubs in Gangoolie, India, which, when completed, will provide a school bus and washroom facilities for a school in rural India.
The Rotarians in the club support the Rotary Foundation, which transforms our gifts into service projects that change lives both close to home and around the world. During the past 100 years, the Rotary Foundation has spent $3 billion on life-changing, sustainable project.
With everyone’s help, Rotary can make lives better in our community and around the world. Donating to Rotary means clean water and sanitation; health and hope in areas that were once ravaged by diseases like polio; economic development; and new opportunities.
For the 11th year in a row, the Rotary Foundation recently received the highest rating given to a charity by Charity Navigator, that annual rates over 9,000 charities worldwide.