Summary of Community & International Projects

Ashby Castle Rotary Club participates in many aspects of the local community as well as international projects, we welcome both men and women of any age. The Club has a wide age range and welcomes people of all ages and backgrounds.

 Our local projects include:

Creating opportunities for young people within schools and clubs such as Young Chef, Young Writer and Young Musician competitions is important to us. We also help provide leaders to run a “2-day “Skills for Success “Conference for the sixth form in a local school. Each year, we support one to two young people in attending a RYLA course (Rotary Youth Leadership Award) at Grafham Water, often collaborating with local companies as part of their young employee training. We undertake regular weekly litter picks and maintain the town’s “Peace” garden. In June we help to organise an outing for the elderly in the town. In December, we run the Santa sleigh throughout the month, visiting the town and local villages. This enables us to donate money to local children’s charities. We have our annual Santa Fun run in Ashby. This is its 10th year, and we are proud to have raised over £90,000 for worthy causes over the years. 

 We support Sailability, which helps disabled people enjoy sailing at Staunton Harold Reservoir. The local Hospice, Bright Hope, also has close connections with us. 

Other areas in town we help with are the Ashby 20 run, Ashby Steam, Ashby Sports Day, Jim’s Tractor run, Remembrance Day, and Conker’s fireworks. We have various fund-raising events throughout the year, including Quizzes, Street collections, Real Ale tours, and Skittles evenings. 

 International projects include:

Fundraising through working with the local community and club events helps us to support Bombolulu School in Kenya, where we sponsor boys and girls, have collected underwear for the children and are currently, with the help of other organisations, knitting squares to be made into comfort blankets t for the young children. We are presently collecting Bikes for Africa. We also support Aqua Box and Shelter Box and keep funds aside to react to any International disaster. We have also supported various humanitarian projects, and Rotary International is committed to eradicating Polio worldwide. Much work has gone into trying to achieve this, with remarkable success. We organise the lighting up of the Loudoun Memorial in Ashby in October to highlight this cause, along with a street collection and collections in a local supermarket.

 We are a very friendly, active club that believes in working hard while having fun and fellowship at the same time. We meet on a Tuesday at 7.00 am and on the first Tuesday in the month at 7.00 pm, both in the Bistro at Springfield, School Lane Ashby and are always delighted to welcome visitors to our Club. So, if you would like to come along and spend time with us to get to know us, please get in touch.