Rotarians assemble

Even a brief run through of the Rotary Club of Crowley’s committees, sub-committees and annual activities will show you that the club is steaming along with no plans of stopping soon.
Time must have flown away from the club Tuesday as its brief reports had to be shortened even more and still the club’s assembly ran a little over time.
But that will happen when you have a roster of activities almost as long as your club’s member list.
Rotary clubs across the world are broken down into five sectors of service – community, international, club, vocational and youth. From there clubs break the service sectors into sub-committees with the groups overseeing many projects.
Not surprisingly, the club’s Community Service Committee has been very busy this year as has been the case for many other past years.
Among the club’s activities placed under Community Service are the prison library project, Christmas food baskets, Thanksgiving dinner at the Welcome House, Ms. Helen’s Soup Kitchen, Empowering the Community Through Excellence Learning Center, scholarships, school supply drive and the Welcome House itself via the Community Outreach Corporation.
All events’ overseers pointed to favorable results over the past year and credited the club and its membership for always lending a hand.
One of the highlights this past year for the Crowley club was the success of Polio Eradication Month in October 2015.
Lee Lawrence, chair of the Polio Eradication sub-committee, reiterated the club’s success and how Crowley, through matching funds from a local private donor and then the two-to-one matching funds from the Bill Gates foundation at the Rotary International level, helped Crowley contribute $11,000 to the cause and the hopeful final push toward polio eradication.
Troy Breaux interjected one other thought and reminder that was shown at the recent Mid-Year Assembly for Rotary International District 6200. Crowley was responsible for $11,000; District 6200 as a whole was responsible for $19,000 in total.
As far as youth service goes, the club’s ongoing nutritious food and literacy program continues to be a success as the club reads to and provides snacks to second graders at North Crowley, South Crowley and Ross elementary schools.
The vegetable garden at Crowley Kindergarten also continues to be a great activity that the club helped create and finally, a “Buddy Bench” is the next project for the club. These benches are designed for students to sit on at recess if they’re having a bad day or are sad and so forth. Buddy Benches are said to help promote friendship and inclusiveness and much more.
Club members were also reminded by the Vocational Committee to let them know if they were unable to speak on their expected day and were also reminded of the vocational speech format.
President Pat Miers explained that the club’s exposure will also only continue to grow in the next year as Rotary Club signage has already gone up at Miller Park and a new bench is set to be placed in Levy Park next month.