Rotary Club of Englewood
The Englewood NJ Rotary Club, founded in 1923, is a member of Rotary International. Rotary is an international service organization, carrying on humanitarian projects both locally and worldwide. Englewood Rotary’s motto, as for other Rotary Clubs internationally, is “service above self.”
Locally, the focus in recent years has been on services to youth. The Club sponsors an Interact Club at Dwight Morrow High School/Academies@Englewood and the annual RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Award), a six-day conference for qualified rising seniors. Our Club also organizes “Career Shadowing” days during which high school students develop perspective about potential careers by spending a day with local professionals and business people. We have also supported summer stipends for high school students who intern through Englewood’s Chamber of Commerce. We also support Home Instruction for Parents of Pre-school Youngsters (HIPPY) program at Bergen Family Center and the “Skating Scholars” program of Friends of the John T. Wright Arena, which provides and after-school program and ice-skating lessons to middle school students. In addition, Englewood Rotary provided support for the construction of a hospital in Haiti, and provides scholarships for nursing students in Haiti.
Locally, the focus in recent years has been on services to youth. The Club sponsors an Interact Club at Dwight Morrow High School/Academies@Englewood and the annual RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Award), a six-day conference for qualified rising seniors. Our Club also organizes “Career Shadowing” days during which high school students develop perspective about potential careers by spending a day with local professionals and business people. We have also supported summer stipends for high school students who intern through Englewood’s Chamber of Commerce. We also support Home Instruction for Parents of Pre-school Youngsters (HIPPY) program at Bergen Family Center and the “Skating Scholars” program of Friends of the John T. Wright Arena, which provides and after-school program and ice-skating lessons to middle school students. In addition, Englewood Rotary provided support for the construction of a hospital in Haiti, and provides scholarships for nursing students in Haiti.
Englewood Rotary is meeting the challenge of the Pandemic by collecting or buying food and distributing it to those in need. We also fed frontline workers at the County's testing center, and we enlist and train volunteers to call the isolated elderly.
Before the Pandemic Englewood Rotary supported these local organizations: Bergen Family Center, SESCIL/Arts Horizons, Community Chest Professional Development Series, Skating Scholars at the John T. Wright Skating Arena, and Flat Rock Brook Nature Center. At the national level, we support the Origin Project for Literacy in Appalachia, and internationally we support Gift of Life, Polio Plus, the Fistula Foundation, and the Hampshire School in Jamaica.
Internationally, the Club’s most popular program has been “Gift of Life,” bringing children from around the world to the United States for life-saving heart surgery not available in their home countries. The Club has also participated in Rotary International’s Youth Exchange program, under which local students spend a year in a foreign country and Englewood in turn hosts a foreign student. We also actively support Polio Plus, the international effort with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to eradicate polio, and the Alliance for Smiles, which changes lives by providing corrective surgery for children born with cleft-palate or cleft-lip.
In order to support its charitable activities, the Club organizes fund-raising events, of which the most important is our annual Community Awards dinner in March.