Community Committee

Loughborough Rotary Community Committee 2018-19

Statement from the Chair of the Community Committee on taking up her appointment

I would like to thank Susan for her hard work as Chair of Community over the past 3 years and I hope in the coming year to continue the strong relationships established with charities in our local community and to expand our brief to include some new and exciting projects. Funding will continue at the same level as last year, we will continue to give of our time and we will continue to support fundraising events starting with a Beetle Drive in September for Dementia UK.

The charities we currently assist cover a diverse range of social problems. For example:

Exaireo- helping homeless people in Charnwood

Living without Abuse- supporting those who leave a dangerous situation often without any possessions

John Storer House- providing services for the elderly and those with learning difficulties

Warning Zone- educating Year 6 children from local schools on the dangers they face as they gain more independence

Life Education- a mobile classroom where personal, social and health topics are discussed

We will also continue to volunteer and give practical help where we can. For example:

The Calvert Trust

National School Games

John Storer House

Warning Zone

Living without Abuse

Charity bucket collections and so on.

Exciting new projects for the coming year involve collaborative working between this Rotary Club, Beacon Rotary and the Loughborough Inner Wheel.

Loughborough Charities Together is the brainchild of Michael Charlesworth of Beacon Club and encourages small local charities to share expertise and resources with no money being involved. We can support with skills and practical tasks. We have volunteers attending the next meeting later this month along with representatives from local charities, Inner Wheel and Beacon.

Starter Boxes (in the pilot stage at present) will provide new basic kitchen equipment for a family being rehoused in the Charnwood area. Referrals coming from Living without Abuse, Supporting Leicestershire Families and Young Carers. The Community Committee met with David Scott from Beacon and Helen Wilson from Inner Wheel to learn more about this new venture. We have volunteers to attend the next Starter Box meeting on behalf of our Club.

I hope to be able to give regular updates to the Club on the progress made with our Charities throughout the year.

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Loughborough Charities Together

Report to Club 24th July 2018

LCT is the brainchild of Michael Charlesworth of Beacon Rotary. At the very beginning he came to talk to us about his ideas and how this would work. It is a support network of small local charities where meeting together enables them to share skills, resources and ideas. A minibus is an example of this, owned by one charity but now also used by another. So far there have been two meetings, both of which have been attended by members of our Club, the last one on 28th June by President Trevor, Peter Griffin and myself. It has become clear that many of these charities need support, not with fundraising (although this is always useful) but with knowledge and with skills.

Since the launch of this initiative Beacon Rotary and Inner Wheel have become involved in this support. Loughborough Lions are also keen to be involved so the network is getting bigger. Many of the local charities will be familiar to you,

Living without Abuse

Supporting Leicestershire Families

Exaireo

Carpenters Arms

JSH

The Bridge

The others involved are

Enrych – working with disabled adults

St Peters Community Centre on Storer Road

Loughborough Blind Social Club

Falcon Centre

Good Gleaners

Marion’s Tinenti Centre

Shepshed Food Bank

Sheree Ram Krishna

The involvement of Rotary, IW and Lions would be to offer our skills and our time to support these charities where we can. Many of us have life and/or job skills that would be very useful or a spare afternoon we could offer to give service in our local community. Examples of skills required range from marketing, help with CV writing, IT skills, being a trustee, financial and business planning, legal support, gardening, decorating and driving.

To move forward in our support of LCT I think we need to think carefully about whether or not we have skills that would be useful. As well as what Michael calls ‘cerebral skills’ these charities also need muscle power, marshals for events, a van and driver, gardeners sometimes something as simple as a raffle prize.

The Community Committee are meeting after lunch today and the help we can give is certainly on the agenda. I would like you all to give this some thought – can I help in our local community, not giving money in this case but sharing my skills and giving my time?

Please be prepared to sign up to help in the near future.

Ros Severn