About The Woodsville - Wells River Rotary Club

The Woodsville, NH - Wells River, VT Rotary Club is part of a global network of over 33,000 Rotary clubs with over 1.25 million members. Rotary members are business, professional & community leaders working together to provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards and build goodwill & peace in the world. Rotary is best know for PolioPlus - the project to erradicate polio worldwide. In 2008 & 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded Rotary a matching grant for $355 million dollars. When Rotary finishes matching that grant (hopefully in 2010), Rotarians will have donated over $1.2 Billion towards eliminating polio.

While we support Rotary International and participate in world-wide projects, most of our community service is focused on the Upper Valley.

Our club has the distinction of being the only club which crosses state lines. When our club was founded in 1924, founding members came from both sides of the river. It was decided that our club would serve both Woodsville and Wells River.

Since 1924, our club has awarded something like $150,000 in scholarships to local students. For many years, we've awarded four $1,000 scholarships each year; one to a student from each of Blue Mountian Union School, Oxbow High School, River Bend Career & Technical Center and Woodsville High School. We raise most of the funds from our annual jr high school basketball tournament. We're getting pretty good at running the tournament, as we've done it every year since 1967. We've had a few grandparents of players mention that they played in our tournament when they were kids. We also have two club members who have volunteered for all of our tournaments.

Our club works on a numbe of other local service projects. One project is The Dictionary Project. Rotary believes literacy is a basic human right and encourages every club to work on literacy service projects. Past club president Dennis Jowell organizes our project, presenting personalized dictionaries to each third-grader at the Newbury Elementary School. After presenting the dicitionaries, Dennis quizzes the students with words they're unlikely to know and will have to look up. One highlight in 2009 was when Dennis asked if anyone knew what polio was - and none of the third graders had ever heard of it!

Our club works with other clubs in our district to develop local youth leaders with Rotary Youth Leadership Awards. RYLA emphasizes leadership, citizenship, and personal growth, and aims to:

• Demonstrate Rotary's respect and concern for youth
• Provide an effective training experience for selected youth and potential leaders
• Encourage leadership of youth by youth
• Recognize publicly young people who are rendering service to their communities

Our club assists local students who want to attend specialized career or vocational training. In recent years, we've helped students attend professional level workshops and programs like Vermont Governor's Institute.

Our club assists other local organizations with their projects. Recently we’ve helped the 4-H Club and helped the West Newbury UCC send humanitarian supplies to Zimbabwe.

Clubs in our Rotary district raised funds to install wells in Ghana. Before the village of Tamele had a well, villagers had to haul their water from a river three miles away from a river that served as well, washing machine, bathtub and sewer. Rotary International has several projects to provide clean water around the world. And, there are some clever Rotarians. One project in Africa came up with a great idea; the put the village's cistern on the school roof. Fetching water is traditionally a task left to girls, they often can't attend school as they use thier time fetching water. With the cistern on the school roof, the village girls were going to the school anyway and now they had time to attend classes. And in a stroke of genius, the village's well is powered by the school's playground equipment. As the kids teeter-totter or spin the carousel, they're pumping water.

The Rotary Foundation's Ambassadorial Scholarship program is the world's largest privately funded scholarship program. Each year, about 1,000 university students and 8,000 high school students receive Rotary awards to study abroad.

Rotary educates tomorrow’s peacemakers and ambassadors. The Rotary Center for International Studies provides master’s-level education in conflict resolution to 60 Rotary World Peace Scholars at seven prestigious universities worldwide.

Rotary is ordinary people around the world working together to protect the environment, improve our communities, end polio & accomplish other extraordinary things.

Rotary is an opportunity for networking. Each club represents a cross-section of community leaders - business owners, executives, managers, political leaders and professionals – people who make decisions and influence policy.

Rotary is fellowship and camaraderie with like minded professionals. Club projects provide opportunities to hone your leadership skills while develop enduring friendships. Club members who travel will find friendly contacts in almost every city in the world.

Rotary promotes high ethical standards and respect for all worthy vocations. Rotarians abide by The Four-Way Test: Of the things we think, say or do

1. Is it the TRUTH?
2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

Wouldn't you like to get involved?