Community Service Activities
Who are We?
The Canberra Sundowners are one of Rotary's newest clubs, having chartered on 20th August 2021. The information on these pages relates to our pre-charter life as a satellite club.
Check out our own web pages at https://portal.clubrunner.ca/15623. These pages on the Canberra Sunrise website are not being maintained separately now that we have our own website.
The Canberra Sundowners Satellite Rotary Club is made up of locals who are passionate about improving our Canberra and broader community and contributing to development projects overseas. Our members care about making a difference and helping where it is needed most. We like to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty, and aim to have fun while doing it.
We meet most weeks, with a typical monthly program consisting of two meetings at our home at the Canberra Club, Blackall Street, Barton and one social event . Normal meeting times are 6.30-7.30pm on Tuesday evenings. We also target at least one community service activity most months. Throughout the worst of COVID-19 restrictions we continued to meet on-line, and as soon as we could, we were back into our community service events.
Guests and potential club members are very welcome to join us at any of our events. Use our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/canberrasundownersrotary to find out more and to make contact and rsvp to an event.
A Sampling of Our Community Service
Without limiting our options in terms of community service, we like to focus on community service activities where we can actually have hands on involvement to help those in need in our local community. In our short life, some of our community service activities are listed below:
Assembling Prosthetic Hands (Helping Hands)
The club raised $5000 to purchase and build 10 prosthetic hand kits to send to land mine affected countries (https://helpinghandsprogram.com.au/ ).
Kindness Conquers All
We have for some time now been supporting Kindness Conquers All, a small local charity that aims to inspire compassion, generosity and kindness throughout humanity. We have helped to assemble a range of packs to be distributed to those in need. See here for more information.
Packing Birthing Kits
Maternal health is a strong priority for our club and over the past years we have raised funds for and helped pack over 1000 birthing kits for mothers in developing nations https://www.kit.org.au/
Tree Planting and Clean Up Australia Day
Our members are passionate about environmental issues and love to help out improving our local area. We have participated in working bees and undertaken tree planting activities at the Jerrabomberra Wetlands and each year like to clean up our ACT by participating in Clean Up Australia Day.
Uplift
The Sundowners have run collection drives to send bras to regional countries. Bras and other intimate items can be extremely difficult and cost-prohibitive to source and these items make an incredible difference in the everyday lives of local ladies.
Power In People
We have recently held several community service activities in support of Power in People. These events have included a range of activities - cutting, sewing, ironing, hammering and more...... to support those in need. We have produced face masks and a few other items that will help people who have sought support through PiP. We are planning a follow up workshop to finish quite a few partly finished items off and to maximise our contribution to PiP and those they are supporting. Read more about Power In People here.
Construction of a Street Library
Our club has purchased and built a Street Library. This has been installed at the Community Services #1 facility in Narrabundah. More details on street libraries is available here.
We have also provided people power and raised much needed funds for charities and food pantries in our local area:
- St Johns Care - using funds raised and donations to purchase as much of the needed supplies to restock the St John's Care pantry.
- St Vinnies Warehouse - helping to sort through the range of donations to assist St Vincent de Paul in their shop and distribution programs.
- Menslink - helping to fundraise and support the important Menslink program.
- Sorted items at Roundabout
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We are always looking for hands on community services we can support. We find our community service work a lot of fun, very rewarding and it makes a difference.
If you know a local or regional charity or group supporting the community and would like to have some hands-on support by a group of enthusiastic and passionate Rotarians, please contact us.