BWI Rotary Club

Meets at Embassy Suites Hotel

1300 Concourse Drive

Linthicum

Time: Thursday at 7:30 a.m.

[email protected]

Howard West Rotary Club

Meets at Turf Valley

2700 Turf Valley Road

Ellicott City

Time: Monday at 6 p.m.

www.HowardWestRotary.org

Rotary Club of Columbia

Meets at Eggspectation

6010 University Boulevard

Ellicott City

Time: Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.

www.columbiarotary.org

Chartered in 1968, the Rotary Club of Columbia has been a very active club and has contributed more than $1 million to local nonprofits and other organizations, including Howard Community College (HCC) and the Howard County Public School System.

The club members also participate in Rebuilding Together, the Loan Closet (founded by the club 11 years ago), giving dictionaries to third-graders and working with the Freestate ChalleNGe Academy — a program that provides skills, education and discipline to at-risk high school dropouts. The club also has two scholarship programs: one for high school scholar/athletes and one for HCC Rouse Scholars to help talented students that are in financial need.

The Rotary Club of Columbia gives additional funds to local Howard County nonprofits. The club also contributes to international projects, including giving donations to Polio Plus and the Rotary Foundation, as well as individual projects in other third-world countries.

To raise these funds, the Rotary Club of Columbia has several fundraisers. It just held its 48th Annual William Jefferson Memorial Golf Outing; each Memorial Day, it holds a Remembrance Run; and it sells squares in a basketball pool for the NCAA Final Four game.

The club is known for its diverse membership, topical speakers and “service above self.”

Rotary Club of Columbia/Patuxent

Meets at Vantage House

5400 Vantage Point Road

Columbia

Time: Friday at 7:30 a.m.

www.columbiarotary.com

www.facebook.com/Rotary

ClubColumbiaPatuxent

The Columbia/Patuxent club is a diverse group of professional men and women who are active both in the community and abroad, with emphasis on helping those in need, supporting education and job training, providing clean water, combating hunger and improving the health and lives of as many people as possible.

Members have volunteered their time by providing motel boxes for the homeless at Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center; providing a district group for support and volunteering with the Eat, Grow, Play Curriculum for the Head Start Program of Howard County; assisting at the Police Pace Race; and distributing free dictionaries to more than 1,000 third-graders, in addition to many other programs.

One of the club’s biggest fundraisers is a Night on the Riverboat, where an evening of fun, food, drink, casino games and laughter is enjoyed. The proceeds support health and wellness in Howard County. Some of the charities that have benefitted from the club’s night of fun include: Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Central Maryland; Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of Central Maryland; the Domestic Violence Center; Gilchrist Hospice Care; Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center; HC DrugFree; Jim Rouse Scholarship Fund; and the YMCA of Central Maryland.

In addition, the club also provides some of its proceeds to international programs such as the Clean Water Project, Orphanages in Colombia and the Foundation Against HIV and AIDS.

The club also sponsors the annual “Community Service Above Self Award.” This award is to recognize non-Rotarian community service leaders in Howard County. In addition to recognition as the award recipient, the Rotary Club of Columbia/Patuxent Charitable Trust makes a $5,000 contribution to a single Howard County-based nonprofit organization of the recipient’s choosing.

Rotary Club of Columbia Town Center

Meets at Sheraton Columbia Town Center

10207 Wincopin Circle

Columbia

Time: Wednesday at

12:15 p.m.

www.ctcrotary.org

Chartered in 1982, The Columbia Town Center Rotary club consists of community leaders, professionals and entrepreneurs dedicated to “service above self.” We are neighbors, friends and community leaders who come together to create positive, lasting change in our communities and around the world.

Through our members and network of resources and partners, we identify where we can make a community impact, and through a combination of financial support and hands-on engagement, we help those in need both locally and internationally.

Through our various fundraisers over the past years, the club has donated more than $1 million to community nonprofits, organizations and scholarship funds. This year’s Valentine’s Gala fundraiser will be on Feb. 6, 2016, and information is available at 410-531-9470, [email protected] or www.ctcrotary.org. In addition to the money raised at the fundraiser, our members have donated more than $90,000 to the Rotary International Foundation, where funds are used to address the following humanitarian needs: promoting peace, fighting disease, providing clean water, maternal and child health, supporting education and growing local economies.

The club supports numerous local charities and other events throughout the year, including the Athelas Institute Inc., Our House, Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center Inc., Community Action Council, Hope Works, Patapsco Heritage Greenway, Conexiones, Rotary Dictionary Project, Rebuilding Together, Bridges to Housing Stability, NAMI Howard County Inc., Gilchrist Hospice Center, Mt. Zion Open Doors Food Pantry, the Mid Atlantic German Shepard Rescue, Howard County Public Library, Leadership Howard County, and along with the other Howard County Rotary clubs, we sponsored the Howard Community College Health Science atrium and dedicated it to Rotary International.

This year the club is focusing on community service projects, programs and organizations that support children in need, education, mentoring and services to citizens in crisis. There is a growing number of children who don’t have enough food to eat at home in Howard County. We have partnered with several teachers at Running Brook Elementary School to start a new “Food for Kids Project” which provides weekend food backpacks for students on the Free and Reduced Meals (FARM) Program. We also provide transportation for needy families to local food pantries and are working to establish a local neighborhood food pantry to serve more who find themselves in desperate need.

Rotary Club of Elkridge

Meets at The Elkridge Furnace Inn

5745 Furnace Avenue

Elkridge

Time: Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.

[email protected]

Chartered in 1948, the Elkridge club has a long history of serving the needs of the Elkridge community.

Rotary Club of Ellicott City

Meets at Tersiguel’s Restaurant

8293 Main Street

Ellicott City

Time: Thursday at noon

www.ellicottcityrotary.com

Rotary Club of Glen Burnie

Meets at La Fontaine Bleue

7514 Ritchie Highway

Glen Burnie

Time: Thursday at 6:30 p.m.

www.rotaryglenburnie.org

The Rotary Club of Glen Burnie’s major club event is a Community Service Awards dinner held every March where, in the spirit of Rotary’s “Service Above Self” motto, community groups in the Glen Burnie and North County areas are able to recognize their own members who go the extra mile in serving the community.

The club is also heavily involved with Glen Burnie High School and its middle schools (Corkran and Marley) in multiple literacy and career programs. Currently, the club is providing Chromebooks for students at the middle and elementary schools in Glen Burnie and the surrounding area under a Digital Classroom program in direct involvement with the Northern Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

Another major project entails giving a college scholarship to a Glen Burnie high school graduate every year, with four “in the pipeline at any time,” said club Treasurer and Past President Rick Kuethe. “We pick students that have done well in high school, but we also try to pick students that need our help and might not be able to afford to go to college otherwise.”

The scholarship program was started in 1962, and all but one student used the scholarship to graduate. “We have helped some wonderful students who now have their own business or have great careers all over the country,” said Kuethe.

The club also volunteers at the Big Glen Burnie Carnival, and maintains a park in the center of Glen Burnie. Each year, the club hosts a Christmas party, complete with food, presents and Santa, for more than 90 local children who would not have much of a Christmas otherwise. On the international side, the Rotary Club of Glen Burnie was the lead club for a $250,000 project that brought clean water to a town of 3,000 people in Santa Clara, El Salvador.

Rotary Club of Lake Shore-Severna Park

Meets at Mt. Carmel United Methodist Church

4760 Mountain Road

Pasadena

Time: Every Wednesday at 6 p.m.; second and fourth Thursday at 7:30 a.m.

[email protected]

www.rotarycluboflakeshore.org

The Lake Shore-Severna Park Rotary club has been serving its community since 1948. The club has been focused on education of children and helping those in need in the Pasadena and Severna Park area.

The club has provided scholarships to high school students and dictionaries to third-graders, assisted in funding health and dental care for the homeless and other underserved people, and teamed with other like-minded organizations to try and bring positive change to people’s lives.

In addition to its local, community-based work, the club has supported water projects throughout Africa. These projects have assured the availability of clean water for several sub-Saharan villages.

Rotary Club of Parole (Annapolis)

Meets at Double Tree Hotel

210 Holiday Court

Annapolis

Time: Tuesday at 7:30 a.m.

www.parole-rotary.org

The Parole Rotary club supports programs for youth; educational opportunities and international exchanges for students and professionals; vocational and career development; and much more. Its major fundraisers are parking cars at the Naval Academy home football games and hosting the Naptown BarBAYQ, a barbeque contest and music festival that draws thousands of visitors in May.

The club’s signature project is the Books for International Goodwill (B.I.G.), which takes used books for shipment to needy schools and libraries in the United States and around the world. Since1995, BIG has saved millions of books from landfills and has shipped more than 7 million books to help spread literacy throughout the world.

Sunrise Rotary Club of Ellicott City

Meets at Tersiguel’s French Country Restaurant

8293 Main Street

Ellicott City

Time: Thursday at 7:15 a.m.

www.sunriserotaryec.org

The Sunrise Rotary Club of Ellicott City has had another busy year of “service above self.” The club’s signature project, the Summer Enrichment Program (SEP), is a Head Start-conducted program that concluded its 14th year in July. This program, carried out by the Community Action Council (CAC) of Howard County, has been planned and supported in close collaboration with the Sunrise Rotary.

The program allows Head Start-eligible 4- and 5-year-olds to participate in a program of learning continuation combined with enrichment activities, including exposure to music, dance, earth science, astronomy, swimming and reading. The club raises substantial funds for this seven-week program from many business and nonprofit organizations in the county, as well as from club members themselves. A rich array of area organizations provide in-kind support that ranges from performing arts and recreation to the sciences.

Following a decision by the “Howard 7” Rotary clubs to embrace the Summer Enrichment Program as their signature program, plans are underway that will better assure CAC’s goals of both expanding and sustaining the program. It is hoped that all Head Start students now enrolled in its regular academic program will be able to participate in the 2016 session.

The club continues its educational partnership with the Howard County Public School System’s (HCPSS) Applications and Research Laboratory (ARL). Plans are underway to again place up to 30 interns from the Health Professions Academy in several of the Lorien Health System providers of skilled care and assisted living. This program, brokered by the Sunrise Rotary, enabled CNAs and GNAs to gain valuable exposure to the work environment. Discussions are underway to expand the internship program to other ARL academies.

Club support has been extended to the Bright Minds Foundation to help underprivileged students in Howard County schools, to Kenya Connect to provide computer resources for students near Nairobi, to Howard Community College and the HCC Education Foundation Partnership, to the HCPSS’s Dictionary Project and the county library’s Bumble Bee Contest, among others.

West Anne Arundel Rotary Club

Meets at Perry’s Restaurant

1210 Annapolis Road

Odenton

Time: Friday at 7:30 a.m.

www.waac-rotary.org