Posted by Shelly Duben on May 02, 2019
Ken Tremblay is proud to serve this year as the President of the Rotary Club of Peterborough. This busy club of 69 members has been serving the Peterborough area for many years and is the home club to Assistant Governor Rick Storey.
 
Locally, the Rotary Club of Peterborough operates a breakfast program at the Prince of Wales Elementary School. Club members and other volunteers provide and prepare breakfast 5 days a week at the school. This program has run for over five years and meets a need in their local community. Recently volunteers from our Club were joined by some players from the Peterborough Petes hockey team.
The Rotary Club of Peterborough partnered with the Rotary Club of Peterborough Kawartha and the City of Peterborough to build an outdoor gym at Beavermead Park. A dedication rock was recently installed, reading, "Presented to the residents of Peterborough in celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday."
 
This club is involved in several international service projects as well. The club supports numerous programs in Honduras and over the past five years has supported a school for under-privileged girls, constructed playgrounds at rural schools, worked beside villagers establishing a community garden, and built a teacher training centre where district teachers receive on-going training and support. Their current project, Rotary Helping Women, involves their club members and local volunteers sewing re-usable menstrual products for women from donated and re-purposed materials. Not only are these given out in Honduras, but they make the project sustainable by teaching women in other countries to sew their own pads to use or sell. This project has been successful in Honduras and is being expanded to Nepal. The Rotary Helping Women will be showcased at the District Conference this year in October [18-20].
 
The club also supports Kids Against Hunger. On April 6th, Peterborough Rotarians, Rotaractors and friends packaged meals for Kids Against Hunger and in one day, the 40 volunteers packaged over 10,000 meals!
 
How do they fund all of these great projects? One of their main fundraisers is the Carl Oake Swimathon. The 33rd Annual Rotary Carl Oake Swimathon was held in February. It was tremendous fun and a huge success.  Twenty five teams participated in the pool at the YMCA and the club hit its target of $50,000.  Over the past 32 years, this event has raised more than $1,000,000 to support local worthwhile causes such as Five Counties Children's Foundation, The New Peterborough Regional Health Centre, the New YMCA, the YWCA Women’s Crossroads Shelter, The Rotary Greenway Trail, and Easter Seals. The club also raises funds through their annual Dinner and Auction.
 
If you are in the Peterborough area on the second or fourth Monday of the month, please consider doing a make-up at the Rotary Club of Peterborough. Meetings take place on 11:45 AM at the Holiday Inn at 150 George St. North, Peterborough.
 
Visit our "Spotlight on Service" Page for more messages about other clubs.