provided to The Santiva Chronicle
The Rotary Club’s year begins in July, the same month the club focuses on maternal and child health. Rotary programs worldwide improve women’s access to skilled health personnel – doctors, nurses, midwives, or community health care workers.
Rotary provides education, immunizations, birth kits, and mobile health clinics. Women are taught how to prevent mother-to-infant HIV transmission, how to breastfeed, and how to protect themselves and their children from disease. Rotary members distribute clean birth kits and train health workers in safe baby delivery, to name just a few of the programs Rotary organizes.
Locally, the club supports the Children’s Education Center of the Islands, a local non-profit preschool; De LaSalle Academy, a school that offers a rigorous academic program for students who learn differently; and award college and trade school scholarships for local students.
The club supports the District Literacy Project, which delivers dictionaries to local 4th-grade classes; FK U Corp, a company that owns several restaurants that donate back to Foster Kids; Our Mother’s Home, a home that empowers young mothers in foster care and human trafficking systems to break the generational cycle for themselves and their children.
The club contributes to the Sanibel School Fund, Sanibel Sea School and Trailways Camps, a camp that develops and provides camp experiences for adults with special needs and respite for their caregivers.
These are just some of the many programs and non-profits our fundraising efforts support locally and worldwide maternal and child health. Grant applications are currently being accepted and are available on the website.
The Sanibel-Captiva Rotary will be holding hybrid meetings both on Zoom and in person at the Community House, 2173 Periwinkle Way. Doors open at 7:30 a.m., the meeting begins at 8 a.m.
For more information about Rotary, visit sanibelrotary.org.