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The Car Show is BACK!
The T-Shirts feature original artwork by Disney artist Stan Dufek! The San Juan Capistrano Rotary Car Show turns 23 this year! We hold it Saturday, February 13, 2027, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Rancho Mission Viejo Riding Park. Walk the rows and you'll see cars, trucks and hot rods. A Marine Corps exhibition will be on site, along with live music, food trucks and plenty of vendors. It works for car lovers and for families who just want a good day out. The money raised suppo
Ray Sanford
3 days ago


Relief for Rasuwa
On 1 October, Rotary and Rotaract members in Nepal handed out relief supplies to families hit by floods and landslides in Rasuwa District. The Relief for Rasuwa project connects Rotary District 9685 in Australia, Toukley-Wyong Rotary, the Rotary Club of Rudramati, and The Didi Foundation. It aims to help families restore basic living conditions, replace essential items, and recover their livelihoods. This is their work, not ours. Sudip Koirala of the Rotary Club of Rudramati
Ray Sanford
Oct 26


Polio Walk
On Saturday, October 24, at 10:00 Chicago time, Rotary clubs across one zone will start walking at the same moment. They are calling it the World's Largest Polio Walk. More than 450 clubs in multiple U.S. states have plans to take part. The idea began with Rick Reigner, 2026-27 governor of District 6440. He had heard Peter Salk speak about his father Jonas Salk's decision not to patent the polio cure. Reigner pledged to do something. He shared the idea with his district, then
Ray Sanford
Oct 22


Helping Ukraine's Kids
Some of the help is not food. More than 1,600 Ukrainian children and widows of soldiers killed or missing in action have been served through mental health retreats. The children's retreats run 18 days. The retreats for widowed caregivers run 10 days. They are part of Common Man for Ukraine, started by members of the Rotary Club of Plymouth, New Hampshire. Eighteen days for the children. Ten for the widowed caregivers. Source: Rotary International's blog, blog.rotary.org,...
Ray Sanford
Oct 20


Study Buddy
The Rotary Club of Luanshya in Zambia runs a project called Study Buddy. Rotary volunteers visit schools, spend time with children, and bring educational materials for them to explore. Annette Chiluba, a community development practitioner, took part. She watched the children explore the materials, ask questions, and proudly show what they had received. She sat with learners herself and helped. She wrote that community service is not simply about giving something to someone. I
Ray Sanford
Oct 16


Bridge of Harmony
After the speeches, Rotary members on both sides of the Detroit River got out their passports and walked onto the new Gordie Howe International Bridge. They met in the middle of the span, right at the border between the United States and Canada. They had come to dedicate twin Peace Poles, one at each end of the bridge, a project District 6400 worked on for more than a year. The Americans wore blue shirts. The Canadians wore red. Out on the bridge, a passer-by asked for a self
Ray Sanford
Oct 9


Already Doing That
During the Study Buddy project in Luanshya, Zambia, Annette Chiluba was handed a Rotary pin and heard the words, "You are already doing that." She is a community development practitioner who had been mentoring young people through school visits with the Howard Legacy Project. When she joined the Rotary Club of Luanshya on its school visits, the members saw that work and named it. Service doesn't always start with a title. Sometimes it starts with seeing a need and doing somet
Ray Sanford
Oct 6


Voices That Transform
In March, District 4563 in Brazil inducted 114 women into Rotary in a single ceremony for International Women's Day. The event also honored ten women from Sao Paulo society as Extraordinary Women. The district marked the day another way too. They released a collection of stories from 27 female Rotary members called Vozes Femininas em Acao, Female Voices in Action. Then something else happened. An Inner Wheel club in Vila Maria converted into a Rotary satellite club made up of
Ray Sanford
Sep 25


Threads of Dignity
In Andhra Pradesh, India, a Rotary club spent a Corporate Social Responsibility grant of about 250,000 dollars on something simple: sewing machines. More than 200 women received high speed commercial machines, and 800 women total were reached by the project. The numbers that matter came after. One woman said her income has doubled. Another said she used to worry every day about feeding her family and now sleeps peacefully. A widow who had relied only on a government pension g
Ray Sanford
Sep 23


Uganda Peace Journalism
In 2022, Vivian Agaba walked into a Rotary club meeting in Kampala already a decade into her journalism career, covering human rights, health, and development, and quietly unsure what came next. At that meeting she met a fellow journalist from Cameroon who was attending the Rotary Peace Center at Makerere University, and who encouraged her to apply. Her first application, in 2023, did not get her in. She applied again in 2024 and was selected for 2025. That fellowship led dir
Ray Sanford
Sep 21


Project POSSIBLE
At East City Central School in Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, a Rotary club started Project POSSIBLE by changing one question. Instead of asking what children with special needs require, they asked what these children can do. Forty four learners spent two weeks in workshops covering arts and crafts, food preparation, and music and movement. The program closed with an event called Taripato, an Ilocano word for deep, protective care. Parents cheered. Teachers guided. Volunteers e
Ray Sanford
Sep 20


Family of Rotary
On July 21, Tracey Mitchem's grandson Elijah had heart surgery at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. The family needed a place to stay for almost two weeks during his recovery, and the Ronald McDonald House had a waiting list. Mary, a member of the Rotary Club of Cincinnati, opened her home to a family she had never met. Tracey belongs to the Rotary Club of Southwest Florida, a thousand miles away. Two clubs, two strangers, one shared idea: Service Above Self. Tra
Ray Sanford
Sep 17


Heritage Todd Creek
In a Colorado retirement community with more than 50 activity clubs already running, one thing was missing: a way to serve. Residents responded by forming the Heritage Todd Creek satellite club. They started small. Members have already planted flowers at a local senior center, and they are now planning emergency preparedness programs for their neighbors. No grand launch, no big campaign. Just people who saw a gap and decided to fill it. Our club is part of the same Rotary the
Ray Sanford
Sep 14


September 11
Twenty-five years ago this month, America stood still. On the morning of September 11, 2001, the country watched an attack unfold that took nearly 3,000 lives and changed how we saw ourselves and our place in the world. What came next surprised even the people living through it. Strangers helped strangers. Neighbors who had never spoken introduced themselves. Blood banks ran out of supply because so many people showed up to give. Firefighters, police officers, and ordinary ci
Ray Sanford
Sep 10


Ken Green
Ken Green opening the latest Library Box built by the Rotary Club of Annapolis. Ken Green spent dozens of hours building two library boxes, then installed them in 95-degree heat. Once the concrete dried and the paint set, he came back to open them with the kids. He has been doing this kind of work since his Peace Corps years in the 1970s. The boxes went up on 10 July at an affordable housing complex in Annapolis, the club's 26th installation. Fifty years in, he still showed u
Ray Sanford
Sep 5


Higher Ground
Rajendra Dawadi was running a school day like any other when a colleague told him the water was coming. A parent had just arrived to pull her child out. He did not wait for a second opinion. He stopped school on the spot and sent every student and staff member uphill. The school was Tribhuvan Trishuli Secondary in Bidur, in Nepal's Nuwakot district. It had 1,643 students. A glacial collapse high in the Himalayas had sent a wall of water down the Trishuli Valley in late August
Ray Sanford
Sep 4


Clinic on Wheels
There were not enough dentists in the barangays of Malolos to give every child an annual check-up. So the Rotary Club of Malolos, Bulacan built a clinic that drives to the children instead of waiting for the children to reach a clinic. The fully equipped mobile dental unit was funded through a global grant from The Rotary Foundation and international partner clubs, then handed over to the local Schools Division Office along with the supplies to start seeing patients right awa
Ray Sanford
Sep 2


Tokyo International
The Rotary Club of Tokyo International started in the summer of 2025 with a simple idea: build a club around the people who actually wanted to join, not the format clubs have always used. Instead of an hour-long lunch meeting every week, members meet for 90 minutes over breakfast twice a month. English is the working language. Fourteen regular members and three alumni from five countries make up the club, including professionals with little or no Japanese. Attendance runs aro
Ray Sanford
Aug 28


Embassy Reception
Mariama Keita-Thiero lost her job the day USAID was dismantled in February 2025, one of more than 10,000 people let go as the agency folded into the State Department. She found her way back to purpose through the Rotary Club of Washington, D.C., where she co-chairs the Embassy International Relations Committee. In May, her committee hosted an ambassadorial reception at the residence of Colombia's ambassador, drawing more than 70 guests from multiple countries. The event raise
Ray Sanford
Aug 26


Rita-Stella Nwojiji
Rita-Stella Nwojiji was a young widow in Ebonyi State, Nigeria, raising three children under six on a teacher's salary when a colleague invited her to a Rotary fellowship. That same week, she joined a club project serving meals to inmates at Abakaliki Correctional Centre, and something in her shifted. By 2011, she was club president, leading projects that built toilets and clean water access for a school for the blind and renovated homes for orphaned babies. The work caught t
Ray Sanford
Aug 24
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