About Rotary
Rotarians
Rotarians are people who like to have fun whilst helping others. The members of the four Rotary Clubs of Northampton and the Rotaract Club of Northampton are people from all walks of life, who share a common interest in helping others by giving their time, skills and abilities to complete projects to serve our local communities and communities in need overseas.
Rotary is led by an International President. This year is the turn of RI President Gordon R. McInally from the Rotary Club of South Queensferry, a town to the west of Edinburgh, Scotland. He calls for Rotary to Create Hope In The World by working for peace and mental well-being. He urges members to engage in tough conversations and earn the trust that’s necessary to realize these values.
Rotary International
Rotary International is a worldwide organisation, with 1.22 million members, in 33,000 clubs in over 200 countries, which organises itself by way of local clubs. Whilst each club follows the ideals of Rotary they all have a different ‘feel’ and complete projects their members are interested in.
Rotary’s mission is to ‘service above self’.
Rotary’s Vision is “Together we see a world where people unite to take action to create lasting change – across the globe, in our communities and in ourselves”.
Rotary International Foundation
Rotary Foundation is one of the largest non-profit organisations in the world. During the past 100 years, the Rotary Foundation has spent US$3 billion on life-changing, sustainable projects around the world.
It does this by making grants available to clubs’ projects so that size, reach and impact can be increased.
The best known of all its projects was the setting up of immunisation programmes with the aim of eradicating polio throughout the world. Foundation has been partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the number of new polio cases has been reduced to just a few cases each year.
How can I find out more about Rotary?
The best way to see Rotary at work is to visit one of the local Rotary Clubs whose details are shown below. Click on each name to access their Facebook page or the links to their websites:
Rotary Nene Valley
Ours is a dynamic club that meets on Thursday evenings at The Olde Cobbler Kingsthorpe and other local venues – see our own website for details.
We enjoy supporting youth projects like the Life Education Bus which visits primary schools to lead discussions with students on bullying, mental health, relationships, and safe use of social media. The Club arranges trips out for disabled children and young carers.
Additionally The Club supports a couple of schools in Eswatini by building classrooms and toilets, and by providing a clean water supply and meals.
Our main fundraiser is RoKart, an indoor karting event that is fantastic fun and very competitive. It has grown to 100 teams of 5 drivers who compete for over 10 heats during January, February, and March evenings. The team entry is only £200 and the event annually raises well over £10,000 for charities. Click here for the website.
The Rotary Club of Northampton
In 2023/24 we are in our 102nd year – that is 102 years of giving service to the Community in Northampton as well as worldwide. We meet either at lunchtime on a Monday or early evening on a Tuesday. We run hybrid meetings which are accessible via zoom. Everyone is welcome. Do come along and find out more!
Local projects include the creation of sensory and butterfly gardens at schools and care homes, building mud kitchens for special needs schools, working with Nenescape to clear the Nene riverside, maintaining a Sixfields roundabout, sponsoring a local musician at NMPAT, organising pantomime trips for underprivileged children, transport for the blind, and many other activities to benefit local people. Internationally, we have sponsored several water wells and water harvesting projects in Africa to provide water for remote villages, artificial limb projects in Africa and India, motorbike ambulances to take pregnant women to hospitals in Uganda, mosquito nets in Malawi and have participated in Polio immunisation days in India.
Recently we helped the charity Home Start in Hazelwood road, by redecorating an internal room and clearing their overgrown patio and garden and sourced some benches for parents and staff to sit outside on.
In June we provided coaches for staff and pupils at Northgate school to attend a super sunny ‘ KidsOut Day’ at Wicksteed Park Kettering, enjoying all the rides and fun in the countryside. Rotarians from Clubs in District 1070 organised and supported over 2,000 children with special needs to have a safe fun time at Wicksteed.
Our members undertake many fundraising events, some jointly with other Northampton Rotary Clubs, and are very active in supporting local food banks. All events, whether to raise money or purely social, are carried out with fun, humour and a friendly spirit which epitomises the fellowship culture of Rotary.
To visit our website please click here.
The Rotary Club of Northampton Becket
Becket Rotary Club likes to have lots of fun and good-humoured banter when the members meet for breakfast on Wednesday mornings at 7.15 am at Overstone Park Golf Resort.
The Club supports a number of local charities including the Lowdown, Young Carers, the Hope Centre and the Prince’s Trust. The Club’s main fundraiser is a brightly lit Santa Sleigh which is towed to various daytime and evening locations with Santa and his helpers. Children (young and not so young) love seeing Santa and his sleigh.
The club is also involved in several overseas projects. We started supplying Classroom Boxes containing teaching essentials for schools in Africa in 2006, to date over 100,000 school children have received materials. In Malawi, we have built dozens of Agrisan toilets, permanent brick-built structures. These provide clean, healthy & safe places for children and the villagers and where the waste products can be used as fertiliser and manure for local crops. We started supporting a rural primary school Chitipi in 2011, where we have renovated 3 classrooms together with the design and construction of an additional 6 classrooms. Since 2019 attendance figures at the school have risen from 1000 learners to over 1500. We are currently fundraising to build another 3 classroom block as part of an ambitious master plan to develop the school as a Centre of Excellence.
The Rotary Club of Northampton West
We are involved in a variety of projects, that are fulfilling, worthwhile, and rewarding – and there’s plenty of fun involved.
We support local charities such as The Hope Centre, The Lowdown, Eve, Home-Start, and a food bank, we also work with the Knysna Education Trust to fund Bursaries for training early years’ teachers in South Africa. We support the Rotary International polio immunisation campaign.
We meet twice a month at lunchtime on Fridays. Our meetings include a meal together and usually, a guest speaker, a debate, discussion, or may be used to plan and prepare for our community support and fundraising projects.
In addition to regular meetings we also have other social, community, and fundraising activities, sometimes jointly with the other three Rotary clubs in Northampton.
Friends and visiting Rotarians are welcome to join us and learn more about us.
The club welcomes new members who support our ethos of “Service above Self”.
Northampton Rotaract
Rotaract is for anyone between the ages of 18 and 30 who wants to make a difference in the community at home and abroad.
Northampton Rotaract currently meets regularly via Zoom and aims to help with projects either by fundraising or hands-on. For example, we have held a car wash to raise funds for the homeless in Northampton and we held a charity abseil at the express Lifts tower which raised nearly £5,000 for the Different Strokes charity, which helps younger stroke survivors. We also maintain a roundabout at Sixfields which the council do not take care of.
Rotaract is above all FUN, it is not a great commitment and is all about doing “what you can, when you can!”
Feel free to get in touch rotaractnorthampton@gmail.com
You could, of course, visit the Rotary International website or
Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland