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Community

Working in partnership with local charities

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The Community and Vocational Committee

The Community and Vocational Committee concerns itself with providing help and assistance – either directly or through other local charitable organisations – to those in need of support in the local community. It is, perhaps, the face of Rotary that many local people would recognise. Although Covid-19 has severely curtailed our activities during the pandemic (2020/1) we continue to function

Local groups we have we helped?

To deliver on all these activities requires all Rotarians to continue to give up a little of their time and energy, the results of which can be truly satisfying and great fun achieving.

  • Katharine House Hospice
  • Helen & Douglas House
  • Dementia Active
  • Local Food Banks
  • The Sunshine Centre
  • Children Heard and Seen
  • Ukraine Support
  • Syrian Refugees in Cherwell
  • Social eyes
  • Laptops for students
  • Dogs for Good,
  • The Beacon Centre

The sort of things we do

The content below is meant to be illustrative rather than comprehensive. It shows some of the events or local charities we’ve provided help in recent years:

Raising funds

Christmas Collections

We continue to raise funds for Katharine House Hospice and a number of other local charities.

We consider requests for financial help especially from those truly deserving causes , where a little help can make significant changes to local individuals/small charitable organisations but confess that through the pandemic funds have been more limited.

Through the pandemic our ability to stage major fundraising events has sadly been severely limited – insofar as concerts and public events have been impossible.

Another major fund-raising event has tradtionally been the Christmas Collections at Supermarkets. Although the normal supermarket arrangements were not possible we nonetheless were able to collect over £2000 for Katharine House and other charities at various (mostly outdoor) venues in the town centre.

Brightening up community areas

Crocus Planting

The purple for polio campaign entails planting thousands of crocuses in public areas to both brighten up such areas and at the same time draw attention to the purple for polio campaign to eradicate this disease from the planet.

By providing polio vaccine and the accompanying logistics rotary has all-but eliminated the disease. Afganistan and Pakistan are two countries yet to be declared polio-free and so the project continues towards total elimination

Christmas Parcels or vouchers

Banbury Rotary Club regularly fund and deliver Christmas food parcels or vouchers for members of the local community that have been identified as most in need. This has gone ahead during and since the pandemic but with some changes as a consequence of the lock-downs.

Providing stewards or marshalls

Vaccination Marshalls

E.g. To respond positively wherever possible to requests from locally centred charities for us to act as marshalls / stewards, at events such as The Banbury Show, the Tour de Triggs or various events at Broughton Castle. ( Sadly it is not always possible to support all the requests for help with the finite resources we have available.)

During covid we provided ssistance as marshalls at a vaccination centre in Banbury – an activity that – at the time of writing continues with the ongoing booster schemes.

See also the supporting youth and the international page for other events and support.

Crocus and Snowdrops in People’s Park – March 2024

Banbury Urban Orchard – Feb 2024

Anniversaries: Happy & Sad – 23 Feb 2024

Town Mayor joins Rotary – 02 Feb 2024

Banbury Breakfast Club Presentation – 8 Feb 2024

Donations to Charities – Dec 2023

Katharine House Tree Collections – Jan 2024

Speaker Report: Alan’s Africa Update – Dec 2023

£5000 Christmas Food Vouchers Dec 2023

Alan’s Africa Report – Dec 2023

100 Book donation to Katharine House – Nov 2023

Poppy Appeal: Thankyou Banbury – Nov 2023