Another Friday and another RCSE Zoom Meeting! This week, the club was fortunate enough to hear from Whitney Shepard who is a Past President of Metro Rotary and is a current Assistant Governor for Area 1 of District 6920. Whitney spoke to the club about how Metro Rotary chooses their service partners each year.
Before Whitney spoke about Metro's service projects, she gave a little background on her club. Metro Rotary has an average member age of 44, 50% of the membership is female, 40% of the membership is self employed, and membership is capped at 90 (they currently have 70 members). Metro also commits to one service project per month, two fundraisers per year, and chooses one local charity every year to support financially as well as with service projects. Last year, they contributed 400 man hours in community service and donated $22,000 to the Rotary Foundation as well as $10,000 to their local charity of the year.
Each year, Metro picks one service partner to work with throughout the year. The non-profits are recruited to fill out an application. There are several criteria that must be met in order to be voted on by the membership. Some of the criteria are there must be a project Metro can put their stamp on, the organization must provide hands on service opportunities, and the service project has to fit into Metro's schedule. A committee vets the applicants and eventually submits 3 non-profits for the club to vote on who they will partner with for the year. Previous service partners have been Farm Truck 912, Habitat for Humanity, Ogeechee Riverkeeper, and Loop It Up. Whitney then asked Molly, who works for Loop It Up, to talk about how Metro has partnered with them.
Molly began by explaining that Loop It Up focus on early childhood literary. Metro has supported and continues to support Loop It Up by reading to Pre-K, Kindergarten, and 1st Grade students at numerous schools in Chatham County. They also helped with the Book Box Library. Book Box Library is a program for students in Title One schools. The students decorate crate boxes to create their own library. The boxes are filled with books from community book drives. Whitney concluded the presentation by saying that Metro likes to create sustained partnerships with previous recipients and Loop It Up is a perfect example of how Metro continuous to support local charities.