Community Notes: Charles City Rotary Club activities and projects

By Jessie Schultz, President, Charles City Rotary Club

I am grateful to have this opportunity to share with you what projects and events Charles City Rotary Club has been doing.

We hope everyone enjoyed the Santa’s Shining Lights display again this last holiday season in Central Park. We have a couple of Rotarians that have been leading that project and have done a great job getting local businesses and organizations to participate.

This Saturday, Feb. 1st, we will be holding our annual Rotary Radio Auction. Make sure you tune in to 95.9 KCHA from 9 a.m. to noon to bid on a variety of items. This is a live event so make sure you are listening and calling in. Go to our Facebook page Charles City Rotary Radio Auction to see all of the items that will be up for bid.

This year we are partnering with the Floyd County Museum to help with some of their projects. We are looking forward to getting your calls to bid on Saturday!

Our club does a variety of projects and events throughout the year to help our community. The money from the radio auction and other fundraisers fund our projects.

This year our bigger project will be an addition to the Inclusive Playground at Sportsman’s Park. We will be putting together a shade covered area with tables and benches that will sit next to the new playground this spring.

Our bigger summer event is the Santa’s Shine and Show car show during the Christmas in July event in town. This has been a fun event the last few years. We look forward to seeing all of the cars, trucks and motorcycles.

In the fall we put on a scrap metal drive to help clean up items from homes and businesses around town. We helped plant trees last year with other groups in the community and have kept busy with watering those throughout the year.

We have a parking lot in town that we clean, and we help maintain the Friends Garden on the bike trail. We ring the bell for the Salvation Army and do Christmas caroling at the nursing homes, assisted living, and hospital.

We normally have our soup supper in January, but that got postponed and will happen later in the year. We will get the word out when we plan that.

Our group hosts a few socials to get to know everyone better and have fun together. We do a night at the brewery after the scrap metal drive; we go out to eat after Christmas caroling, and we have a club family picnic at a local park.

Our end of the club fiscal year banquet is the end of June with a nice meal, program, and awards.

If you are wanting to join a service club or thinking about it, we would love to have you come to a meeting and check it out. You are welcome anytime! We meet every Monday at noon at the Elks Lodge in Charles City.

The meetings include time for a catered lunch and fellowship, followed by a program which usually includes guest speakers on various topics.

For more information visit charlescityrotary.org and check out our Facebook page, Rotary Club of Charles City, Iowa.

Thank you to everyone who supports Rotary. Without you things like the annual scholarships to graduating students from Charles City High School, new shade area for the playground, and the many projects around Charles City over the years would not have been possible.