July is the beginning of the Rotary year, and also the month in which Rotary focuses on Maternal and Child Health. Worldwide, Rotary programs 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 breast-feed, and how to protect themselves and their children from disease. Rotary members distribute clean birth kits and train health workers in safe delivery of babies, to name just a few programs Rotary organizes.
Locally, our Club supports 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. We support the District Literacy Project, that 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 the foster care and human trafficking systems to break the generational cycle for themselves and their children. We contribute to the Sanibel School Fund, Sanibel Sea School, 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 that our fundraising efforts support maternal and child health locally and world-wide. Grant applications are currently being accepted and are available on our 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 8:00 a.m. For more information about Rotary, please visit sanibelrotary.org. All are welcome!
