2023-2024 Club Signature Projects

Le Sueur Rotary Club – Pollinator Learning Lab

Le Sueur Rotary grants each new member cohort up to $1,000 for a community project of their choice. The cohort chose a project related to the Rotary Protect the Environment focus area. They identified the importance of pollinators and the struggles they face. They chose to partner with other local organizations to establish the Pollinator Learning Lab. 

They created a space that will inspire others to establish their own pollinator-friendly yard projects, to find ways to benefit pollinators, and to grow in their tolerance and knowledge of the importance pollinators play in healthy communities, our food systems, and our daily lives. 

Hudson Rotary Club – St. Croix River Dunk

• The St Croix River Dunk is a fun event for people of all ages.  ​
• Teams jump into freezing cold water to raise money for charity. ​
• Other clubs are welcome to join, and it’s an easy way to raise funds while having fun!
• YouTube Vido Link: https://youtu.be/PLOeeeAbwTQ?si=eWXciKE6rqpgv7AD

Hudson Daybreak Rotary Club – Chapina Bonita – Smoke-Free Stove Project

To help raise awareness, our club members help prep food for the stove demos the week of the fall festival at YMCA Camp St. Croix. Multiple shifts of Rotarians are on hand for the demonstrations throughout the day. Permanent signage and key Rotarians who have been to Guatemala to explain the project help raise awareness. The two stoves on site are authentic to the stoves we built and the shelter they are under. We prepped around 500 tortillas and ran out!

Open fire cooking can shorten a person’s life by 10-15 years. In 2015, Hudson Daybreak Rotary Club members Dr. Greg Young and Linda Robertson went on a medical mission trip to Guatemala. During their trip, they came across many indigenous Guatemalans with respiratory diseases, eye irritations, burns, and other medical issues that were directly traced back to the unsafe practice of cooking with open fires in their homes. Knowing Rotary is a global organization Linda and Dr. Young reached out to the Guatemala East Rotary Club. To their delight, they discovered that one of the local Club’s members, Carlos Galvez, had already begun championing the Clean Cooking Stove Program. The women of the village cook on open fires, using an iron pot on top of a wooden table with kindling and wood pieces stuck under the pot. This method creates a lot of smoke which gets into the women’s lungs and causes lung cancer. Since the women carry their babies in a scarf tied to the woman, babies breathe the smoke, too. One woman went to the doctor because she had lost her hearing. The doctor scraped the soot out of her ears and miraculously, she could hear again! During our trips we typically organize materials for 24 “stove kits”. To build a stove, you need 55 bricks, 8 cinder blocks, and some mortar mix. The family that receives a stove must pay half of the cost. The monthly earning in this village is $200. The Chapina Bonita stove uses one-sixth the amount of wood compared to the older method of cooking and wood is expensive. Previously families spent 30-40% of their income on wood. These stoves allow the family to save money so these stoves pay for themselves.

But we do know that through our efforts, even in this past year, we’ve shared this project we thousands of people within our community and now more than 8,000 stoves have been built! One way we’ve kept this project front and center is through our permanent display at YMCA Camp St. Croix that has two Chapina Bonita Stoves positioned under a recreation of a Guatemalan structure. Next to it is permanent outdoor signage explaining the project with links to support. This past fall, our club hosted a local stove demo in Hudson, Wisconsin to share the project in Guatemala and talk about the Rotarians returning once again to help in January, 2024. Two shifts of numerous Rotarians prepped, cooked, served, and connect with hundreds of families in our community. January 11-18, 2024, several of our club members and spouses went to Guatemala to install more stoves in the homes of indigenous villages. We work very closely with a Guatemalan Rotarian who initiated this project. This is our 7th year participating in the Chapina Bonita stove project. In addition to those who traveled, our international committee, the board, and past participants helped plan the trip and educate other members prior to travel. Our club has funded hundreds of stoves, educated and inspired thousands through the years – all to ensure more Guatemalan women and children to live longer, healthier lives. Smaller stoves are for women who have families, and a conservative estimate for impact is three people per stove built. While our club was not directly involved with 8,000 stoves, we do pride ourselves on expanding Carlos’s support base and reach exponentially to people in our direct community, within the University of Wisconsin system, and throughout the country!

Lake Elmo Rotary Club – Kindness Rock Garden
​Elementary students learn about kindness through an art project. The project is being extended to middle school. 

Faribault Rotary Club – Pollinator Project –

Teach children the value of pollinators to the environment. Empower each child to make a valuable contribution.

Faribault Rotary purchased three books for each third-grade classroom for $720.00. Tri-Lakes Sportsman Club funded the cost of the plants totaling $3000.00. Donahue’s Greenhouse provided 350 pots filled with soil. Rice County Soil and Water Conservation office prepared the take-home instructions in three languages (Somali, Spanish and English)

River Falls Rotary Club – Diaper Drive & Burger Battle

The River Falls Rotary Club is an active and fun group.  Our club focuses on youth and literacy programs.  We also fund a backpack program, Jumpstart to Literacy, and participate as Rotary Readers in our four elementary schools. We are looking forward to encouraging other clubs to consider conducting a community-wide diaper/baby wipes drive, or doing a Burger Battle fundraiser.

​White Bear Lake Rotary Club – Rotary Nature Preserve at Birch Lake

This beautiful 40-acre Rotary Nature Preserve in White Bear Lake is undergoing a native restoration. We are looking for clubs who would like to support an environmental project through the district grant we are submitting. ​

Coon Rapids Rotary Club – Respect Retreat for Conn Rapids High School

Respect Retreat for Coon Rapids High School Freshman. Help students realize they matter, others matter and what they do matters. Understand that disrespectful behavior is harmful and engage bystanders to stand up. Identify ways to improve the culture of respect in your school and community. 

North St. Paul/Maplewood/Oakdale – Sylivia’s Children

• Sylvia’s Children​
• Celebrating 20 years since Sylvia was ‘adopted’ by Mbiriizi Advanced Primary & DayCare School as their grandmother!​
• Over 1,000 students in Primary School​
• 80 orphans in high school​
• 170 orphans with college/technical degree​
• 100 orphans poised to graduate in 2024 and 2024!

​Owatonna Early Edition Rotary – Tanzania Furniture Project

• Over 270 desks with chairs, bookcases, misc. furniture and books were specially packaged to fit securely in a 40 container. ​
• ​This is equipment that more than likely would have ended up in a landfill in southern Minnesota.

Northfield Rotary – North Star Youth Exchange

Project Dates: Hosted first Rotary Youth Exchange student in 1969 and sent two students in 1970; currently hosting 5 and sending 7 outbound this year. Ongoing program. 
Outcomes Achieved: We created wide and deep friendships. We showed young people, their families, their host families, and the community what Rotary was about. Some became Rotarians, many promoted Rotary, and everyone grew in their understanding of MN and the USA, the countries represented in the hosting. We developed world citizens. We exercised and developed tolerance, flexibility, and understanding.
Number of Members: There have been hundreds over the years; this year, over 25 members are directly involved in our RYE program. 

Stillwater Sunrise & Stillwater Noon – Saving Mothers & Children

• We have been side by side with the family as we process their resettlement here.​
• The sponsorship team consists of 13 Rotarians – 7 from Stillwater Sunrise and 6 from Stillwater Noon.​
• The vast majority of members have contributed to fundraising, donated household items, offered assistance, and welcomed.​
• Total Cost to date $23,000.​

Greater Rochester, Rochester Risers, The Rochester Rotary Clubs – Ethics & Peacebuilding

The 3-club Rochester Rotary Ethics and Peacebuilding program brings focus, tools, and encouragement to young people to participate in making their community better. And, it builds interaction between Rotarians and students, which is a win/win for both. The Rotary Ethics and Peacebuilding program included a full-day kick-off event on Feb. 12, 2024, for 66 students at John Marshall High School. Patricia Shafer, executive director of NewGen Peacebuilders, led the students in exploring a variety of perspectives around ethics. Rotarians facilitated small group activities focused on ethical decision making and taking the abstract, conceptual topics of ethics and peacebuilding and making them actionable. In the afternoon, students were introduced to the idea of “positive peace,” which is defined by the Institute of Economics and Peace as the attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. Students then discussed videos of peace projects that other students have done and presented their views to the whole group about how the projects demonstrated one or more of the 8 Pillars of Peace. The final activity of the day was each student reflecting and writing on a card their ideal solution to a problem that is important to them. This activity exemplified the 2023-24 Rotary theme “Imagine.” The cards were attached to a balloon bouquet that was presented to the school principal. Topics identified by the students included affordable health care, food insecurity, bullying, homelessness, and many others. Throughout the remainder of the Spring semester, students enrolled in the Ethnic Studies class at John Marshall are completing 10 online modules about how peacebuilding relates to identity, diversity, justice and action. Students who complete the online modules will become certified peacebuilders from NewGen Peacebuilders.

The high school students who participated were empowered to see that they have a responsibility and the ability to create a better, safer, more peaceful community. Through the media coverage of the event, Rotary was highlighted as an organization that invests in youth and promotes positive peace. Fifty-seven percent of the students rated the one-day workshop as “very useful,” and 40% rated the workshop as “somewhat useful.” Comments from students about their experience during the one-day workshop included: • “I learned the meaning of ethics.” • “To make things better, it takes more than one thing that needs fixing, and if you don’t stand up some people may not.” • “There’s no specific age that you need to be to make yourself heard.” • “Peace should be led by young people.” • “We came together as a group of young people and talked about mainstream issues in a civilized way.” Another important outcome was strengthening the relationship between Rotary and the Rochester school district, including the principal and three teachers at John Marshall High School.

District 5960 LIFT 

LIFT is an acronym that stands for: Listen, Inquire, Facilitate, and Transform. This is the basic process that the LIFT program operates by.

LIFT is a District 5960 program that focuses on communities suffering from extreme poverty. It empowers the community to take ownership of and advance from poverty. LIFT’s current area of operations is Nicaragua.