The Club has a policy of spending the vast majority of money on local projects. Even when donating to national charities we do our best to ensure that the money is spent locally.
Recently we have been supporting The Grange Junior School. At the start of each new academic year we have purchased a book for each pupil In addition to this a team of volunteers have been to the school each week to help with the children reading and during the ‘Lockdown’ we have purchased tablets for some of the pupils to continue their education at home.
Other local donations have been made over the years to: Hope House, Air Ambulance, Parkinsons, Severn Hospice, Water Aid, Prostate Cancer and a multitude of small organisations like the Street Pastors, The Ark, Riding for the Disabled and some deserving individuals requiring assistance in difficult times.
From time to time, we donate to international disasters mainly through Shelterbox https://www.shelterbox.org/ and Aquabox https://www.aquabox.org/ In recent years we have supported various projects overseas where we have had personal contact with people on the ground as we are very aware of potential problems with money not being spent where it was supposed to be spent!
One charity we have supported for several years in third world countries is ‘Lend with Care’ https://lendwithcare.org/ This organisation identifies people in various countries who could benefit from some financial help. These could be people who wish to start a business be don’t have the capital. We log on to the Lend with Care website and basically lend small amounts of money to these people who repay it over a period of time. When the money is repaid it is then lent to others.
Over recent years Shrewsbury Severn Rotary Club has lent £6,600 to various projects in third world countries. We have made 131 loans, helped 956 entrepreneurs, which in turn has helped 3554 family members and created 1107 jobs.
During this time we have only had 1 default and one where ‘Lend with Care’ wrote off the loan’ due to a massive currency fluctuation.
We continue to invest to create jobs and help improve the lives of others who are not in such a fortunate position as ourselves in the UK.
Anyone can ask us for assistance for themselves or others.