The Rotary Club of Queen Anne has decided to concentrate most of this year's community projects on local schools and students. At the high school level the club will for the first time provide $2,500 in scholarships split between the Center School and the Marshall High School Teen Mothers program.
Throughout the year Rotarians support the mothers and their children with back-to-school supplies and Christmas and graduation gifts. The Queen Anne club has been supporting the Teen Mother program for 20 years.
The club also works with Coe Elementary School atop Queen Anne Hill. To encourage literacy, for the past few years the club has been giving every third-grader a dictionary in the fall. To expand this project, Queen Anne Rotarians will do the same for every third-grader at John Hay Elementary. Also new this year, the club is sponsoring a spelling bee contest between Coe and John Hay students with winners receiving $500, $250 and $100 savings bonds.
For more than 10 years the club has coordinated the popular "Manners at the Manor" targeted for every fifth-grader. About 10 students at a time are taken to lunch at Bayview Manor in Lower Queen Anne where they are paired with senior residents for a sit-down, linen-tablecloth lunch. The students not only learn proper table manners but also learn how to converse with their elderly hosts.
The final school-oriented project targets high achievers at Center School. Each month the faculty will identify a student to be recognized by the Rotary Club as Student of the Month. The club is actively looking for other ways and projects to support Center School students.
OTHER ACTIVITIES
In addition to educational programs, once a month the club provides the manpower to serve the homeless dinner at City Team Ministries. At Christmas the club provides gifts and even Santa Claus to the children of parents going through drug rehabilitation at Seadrunar. And next summer the club again will sponsor summer camp for a child of a dying AIDS patient.
During the holidays the club is also contributing $2,000 to the "Spirit of Giving" project started by one of its members 24 years ago. Money is raised throughout the community, and literally thousands of homeless, Harborview patients and nursing home residents are given gifts from Santa Claus on Christmas Day.
Besides these local concerns, Queen Anne Rotarians will be very active with international projects. Members support the Rotary Foundation, which provides more international scholarships than any other organization in the world and is the leader in the effort to eradicate polio and other childhood diseases from the face of the planet.
Entirely on its own, the Queen Anne Club is tackling five international projects on its own. The club will provide bicycle helmets to Vietnamese youngsters; many Vietnamese children are disabled each year from head injuries suffered in bicycle accidents involving three or four passengers being transported on one bike. Also, the club is providing 20 wheelchairs to disabled in the Dominican Republic and funding micro-credit lending in Latin America, a water project in Vietnam and a project at an orphanage in Russia. And new this year, the club is expanding its dictionary literacy program by buying Spanish dictionaries for third-graders in Latin America.
The Rotary Club of Queen Anne was chartered in 1986 under the name Rotary Club of Elliott Bay; the name was changed a few years ago. The club meets weekly, every Tuesdays at noon at the Best Western Executive Inn, 200 Taylor Ave. N.
