Welcome

 Welcome to

The Rotary Club of the Stroudsburgs

Rotary at work, May, 2012: Schools for Haiti 

The Rotary Club of the Stroudsburgs has raised and donated $5,000 for “Haiti Outreach,” an organization focused on making Haiti a developed country.

The money will be used immediately to build a school in Haiti. This project and all others taken on by Haiti Outreach are sustainable on a long-term basis, are done in conjunction with local community groups in Haiti, and are initiated and then maintained by those communities.

Haiti Outreach is also drilling wells to provide basic water systems in small towns, collaborating with Fonkoze, a Haitian micro-lending bank, to get money to mostly poor women in rural communities, and is partnering with Mindful Generations to create a sustainable agriculture project.

The Rotary club got involved after a presentation last year by Gesner Mondelas of Haiti Outreach. The school will be a public secondary school in Ranquitte, Haiti, and is the second school built by the organization. The first is already open in La Victoire, Haiti. The new school is scheduled to be built this summer and opened in September.

The International Projects Committee of the local Rotary includes Rob Dalziel, Phyllis Gibson, Maria Candelaria, Frank Herting, Franke von Engel and Ginnny Kirkwood.  Dalziel spearheaded the effort for the local club.

The Stroudsburgs club is partnering with Rotary District 5950 in Minnesota for this project, and hopes to enlist other clubs in this area. President Paul Conforti met with the Minnesota district governor at a Rotary convention in New Orleans in 2011 and brought the possibility of a Haiti project back with him.

The Rotary Club of the Stroudsburgs, created in 1922, in the past five years raised and distributed more than $145,000 in grants and scholarships to 30 different organizations in the Poconos. During the same period the club sent more than $100,000 for Rotary International projects overseas, for projects ranging from the eradication of polio worldwide to, this year’s goal, construction of a school in Haiti.  The club annually awards four college scholarships to Monroe County students at East Stroudsburg University, awards four other scholarships to high school seniors from Monroe County, and conducts an essay contest, with $875 in awards, annually. The amount distributed to Monroe County students annually is $5,875.

The goal this  year and every year is to help more organizations and more individuals with more money, whenever it will make a positive change.

The Rotary Club of the Stroudsburgs meets Thursdays at 11:55 a.m. at the Sycamore Grille in Delaware Water Gap and is eagerly recruiting anyone who wishes to embrace the community and share the good feeling that results when good times bring good things to good people.