Our Club's History

We are located in the Scottish town of Helensburgh on the northern banks of the Clyde estuary.  In Scottish Gaelic the town is called Baile Eilidh - the town of Helen.

Our Rotary Club was chartered 43 years ago on 23rd June 1981 as the Rotary Club of Rosneath and at that time we were based in the village of Kilcreggan on the Rosneath peninsula across the sea loch from Helensburgh. Changing demographics and work patterns forced a relocation to the village of Rhu on the outskirts of Helensburgh and in December 1992 we changed our name to the Rotary Club of Helensburgh Garelochside.  On 21st March 2023 we changed our name to Lomond Rotary Club to recognise the wide area of our operation, from Arrochar to Cardross to Balloch.

Our Charter Night in 1981 - clearly an enjoyable evening!

Our second president, Lehel de Krivatsy, was American and naturally he helped us to establish very early American links. When Lehel died some years later, in his memory, his widow made the largest single donation to Rotary Foundation ever made by a club member. Members from those early days have fond memories of Lehel and the tremendous efforts he made to establish the club in the community.

Locally we are part of the South of Scotland Rotary District, which has 2000 members. Despite being a fairly small club, we have a great record of achievement:

•  We work in close partnership with Police Scotland and Argyll & Bute Council to deliver an Internet Safety programme to all 13 primary schools from Arrochar to Cardross to educate youngsters in the need for care when using the internet and social media. We run an associated poster competition with the results being shown across Scotland.

•  In partnership with Helensburgh & Local District CPR/Defibrillator Association we deliver an outstanding CPR (Cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and defibrillator training service and are now approaching 30 years delivering this service to our community. In the last 5 years we have organised the installation of 250 Publicly Accessed Defibrillators throughout the Helensburgh, Dumbarton and Clydebank areas. Each year we train over 2,500 people to deliver CPR and use defibrillators in Helensburgh and Lomond and another 2,500 in the West Dunbartonshire area - a total of 5,000 youngsters and adults trained each year. We are particularly proud that this has resulted in the saving of over 40 local lives.

•  In 2021 two of our members helped represent world-wide Rotary at the COP26 Conference held in Glasgow, being two of the five Rotary International delegates. To help spread the Global Environment crisis message to young children we organised a UK-wide poster competition that attracted 5,000 entries from as far apart as Cornwall to Mull. We were especially delighted to host the International President of Rotary during his attendance at COP26.

RI President Shekhar Mehta in Helensburgh admiring the winning entries in our poster competition.

We support many local and international causes with financial aid and the work we carry out is a reward in itself, but it is also a delight to be recognised by our peers and 7 years ago we received the honour of being named Club of the Year in the West of Scotland – wow! In 2021 we had the unprecedented honour of receiving 6 Awards from Rotary in the West of Scotland to recognise our contribution to the education of local children and the saving of local lives. In 2022, to our huge delight, we again received the ‘Club of the Year’ Trophy and in addition we were awarded the ‘Best Club Project’ Trophy for our participation in the COP26 Conference held in Glasgow. To complete a really successful year three of our members were awarded the District Governor’s Service Above Self Award.

Past President Tariq Durrani and President Gordon Greig with our trophies