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Rotary is a worldwide humanitarian service organization making a difference to local communities 

and further afield through service-based initiatives and charitable fund-raising activities.

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Membership - Rotary in Great Britain and Ireland (rotarygbi.org)

WE LOVE WHAT WE DO BUT CAN ACHIEVE MORE TOGETHER

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See  of our programme of forthcoming  meetings & events to your right.

WHAT YOUR LOCAL CLUB DOES

10th Rotary Shakespeare Charity Duck Race 2025

 took place on Saturday, 23rd August at 2 pm in glorious sunny weather. Started by the Mayor Danni Hunter. 

Although the final total is not yet confirmed, we believe, thanks to the generosity of everyone involved, that this will be a record-breaking year for contributions by  Stratford Rotary Club to Shakespeare Hospice for this event.

On behalf of Rotary Stratford, thank you to all supporters, businesses, participants, and to the Stratford Herald for their continued coverage.

The Rotary team worked tirelessly throughout August selling tickets and securing many generous sponsors from local business ‘for the Corporate Duck Race, for which we are extremely grateful. All proceeds from the event will go directly to support Shakespeare Hospice.

We would like to extend our thanks to Stratford BID, Aaron Corsi and Jude Bowley, volunteer from The Shakespeare Hospice, who dedicated herself to selling tickets whenever and wherever possible. Our Rotary team were outstanding, embracing the spirit of the race and working enthusiastically to make the event a success.
The lucky winner of the £150 prize was John, a local resident, who very generously donated £50 of his winnings back to Shakespeare Hospice. 

The winner of the Corporate Duck Race was Barry the Butcher – a well-des

rved victory after many years of sponsoring the event without success.
We also thank the local businesses who supported the race by decorating their windows. This year’s joint winners, judged by the Deputy Mayor Sam McNaught -Barrow, were Trespass and Rathbone,, with Launch recognised as a strong runner-up. Their creative contributions brought colour and fun to the town centre, and we hope to see their support again next year.

Rtn. Gilly Rushton Duck Race Organiser 

Some fun moments from the day

 Our thanks to thanks to  NFUM HQ for permitting Rotarians Gilly Rushton & David Dudley to sell tickets for the forthcoming Charity duck race at their HQ on 13th August raising £215.

RECENT DONATION TO RIDING FOR THE DISABLED ORGANIZATION  11.8.2025

Club members and their family attend flag unfurling at the 2025 Shakespeare's Birthday Celebrations

Rotary Shakespeare Marathon and Half Marathon

Helped supporting this event 27th April 2025

ROTARY YOUTH SPEAKS 

DEBATE COMPETITION UPDATE 21^ST JANUARY 2025

Top marks for school teams in public speaking competition

The winning teams from the event organised by the Rotary Clubs of Alcester & Bidford and Stratford-upon-Avon at Alcester’s Greig Hall now go forward to represent the area in the district finals.

Students from Alcester Academy, Alcester Grammar and Stratford’s King Edward VI (KES) schools have been successful in a public speaking competition organised by Rotary. The annual Youth Speaks contest was well supported with five schools and 11 teams of three students aged between 11 and 17 participating.

Winning in the Intermediate Competition were Dev Mangipudi, Otis Green and Aarush Dayanand from KES debating whether The 11+ exam should be abolished, with the best individual performance going to Florence Seckham from Alcester Grammar who proposed the motion that Schools should encourage competitivity. 

In the Senior Competition it was a clean sweep for Alcester Academy with Faith Griffiths, Eshal Rehman and Molly Thompson-Taylor arguing that Britain is dependent on the Royal Family and Harriet Covill judged best individual for her performance in her team’s debate that Transgender people should be allowed to compete in their chosen gender sport.

Commenting on the event, head judge, performance coach Sharon Bott said : “Wow! Each year we are blown away by these young people. They each deserve an award simply for volunteering and their courage in taking part. Their hard work shines through and it is always an enlightening evening for all the judges.” She added this year’s competition was one of the closest yet with very strong performances by the teams from St Benedict’s in Alcester and Stratford-upon-Avon School.

DONATION FEATURE-COMPUTERS FOR AFRICA

Improving life chances of deprived young South African children since 2007 

through computer donations. 

We all know how important computer skills are to employers, and for employment prospects; a long-standing project by a former Birmingham RC supported by the RC of Stratford on Avon continues to facilitate IT skills development through annual cash donations & by shipping and organizing the local distribution of computers in southern Africa and regular computer donations.

The Stratford-o-A club donates £750 annually to Computers for Africa which alongside periodic donations of £2000 from the Birmingham Rotary Endowment Fund fund has helped sustain the project and increase computer shipments from 20 a year to 200.

This year’s shipment to ESWATINI will be shipped to and distributed from the headquarters of the local Scout movement in Southern Africa.

BACKGROUND: Rotarian Paul Tomlinson began this project back in 2006 when he and his wife spent some time working in the God’s Golden Acre Orphanage in South Africa. With cash from Stratford-o-A Rotary club he provided two new computers to the orphanage which triggered the youngsters’ interest there in learning to learn about computers. News that that Rotary had provided computers led to local schools and communities asking for help too. On his return to England, he teamed up with a Computers for Africa, a charity working out of Plockton High School in the Western Highlands of Scotland. Today, 19 years later computers are provided annually to the areas of KWA ZULU NATAL (province adjacent to Durban) and to neighbouring ESWATINI (formerly Swaziland).  

Alongside the help of Ex IT teacher Terry Heaviside, who started Computers for Africa and in the early years secured most of the machines from the Scottish Education Authority, continues acquiring and preparing the machines for this project. 

Paul’s original role was locating deserving schools, ensuring security and availability of IT teachers and preparing the itineraries for the annual visits of Terry &  IT friends to distribute the latest shipments. A local hotelier, Jon Bates, in the town of Nottingham Road, has taken on the identification of deserving schools and now has a local team, so Paul no longer needs to visit Africa every year. A distribution point at the local community college in Nottingham Road enables computer shipment direct to them with a follow-up visit from Terry’s team to supervise their distribution and installation. For his work, Stratford Rotary funded a Paul Harris Fellowship which was awarded to Terry on one of his trips to Africa in 2015.

We donate to local good causes.

Donated £400 to Stratford Riding for the Disabled

HOLD FUN EVENTS TO RAISE FUNDS FOR GOOD CAUSES

£1,216  raised for Rotary charities at a race night in October

Shakespeare Hospice Charity Golf Day24th September 2024

Event location: Stratford-on-Avon Golf Club

CHARITY DUCK RACE -SATURDAY 24TH AUGUST

Come and join the FAMILY fun.
Race commences 2pm at the Weir  Lucy's Mill
Tickets on sale from Rotary Tent opposite Encore, Riverside 
from 10am on Sat 17th and 24th August

Shakespeare Marathon - Sunday 21st April
RunThrough managed their first Shakespeare Marathon in Stratford with a big turnout of circa 3,000 runners,the main beneficiary being Shakespeare Hospice.
Our club's continuing involvement with this event helps raising monies for charities. 

This year’s winning medal designer Martha Wainwright is shown below.The Rotary Design Competition for under 18’s is sponsored by Shakespeare Martineau and the Stratford Herald.   

Please put next year’s event date in your diary
27^th April 2025

Martha Medal designer & Club President Davi Taylor.Cose up of Medal.

Participants enjoyed the challenge of doing the Half or Full Marathon, some joined by their pets. Family, friends and spectators cheered the runners on, whilst soaking up the the atmosphere and good weather.

Pub Quiz for The Air Ambulance Service Old Tramway Inn 9.4.2024

Up, up and away, Charity Quiz night at Old Tramway Inn raises £500 for The Air Ambulance Service

Picture above of cheque presentation to the AirAmbulance Service.
Rotarians Clive Jolliffe (Event organizer) and Club President David Taylor give representative Jeanette Mosley-Pratt who said, "I am delighted to accept this cheque for the Air Ambulance Service from funds raised here at The Old Tramway Inn with the support of the Landlady Emily Kilmarten.Each mission (aka call out) costs a minimun of £2.3K. In 25 years of local operation over 50 thousand mission have been flown.

Event details

The evening of 9th April got off to a flying start at the Old Tramway Inn with Rotarians, their friends and family alongside a team from the Air Ambulance shop in Greenhill Street racking their brains to answer questions posed by the Landlady Emily Kilmarten, who offered her services as Quiz Mistress and her venue free of charge for the fund rising event.

Event organizer, the Rotary Club of Stratford upon Avon, gave the winning team boxes of chocolates. The associated raffle was well supported by pub goers and quizzers alike and helped boost the evening’s takings to £500.

MANY THANKS TO THOSE WHO SUPPORTED THE RAFFLE & QUIZ PARTICIPANTS

See pictures of winning team & Quiz Mistress in action below