Woodland Hills Rotary Honored by the Valley’s Women Center
Woodland Hills Rotary Honored by the Valley’s Women Center
The Rotary Club of Woodland Hills is delighted and grateful to be honored by the Valley Women’s Center with their Community Award at its Annual Luncheon on Sunday, September 18 at the Warner Center Marriott.
Many people do not know what Rotary does. The organization began in a small office in Chicago in 1905. It was the brainchild of Paul Harris, an attorney who wanted to get a group of like-minded professionals together. Within five years Rotary became a national organization, and by 1912 it had attained international status.
Today there are more than 34,000 clubs around the globe with a membership of more than 1.2 million. The Rotary Club of Woodland Hills was chartered in 1956 and is proud that it has continuously served the community and the world for 60 years.
The club’s collective mission is to leave the world a better and healthier place, to alleviate suffering, and to promote worldwide peace. This is accomplished by running local projects such as free medical care in the San Fernando Valley through RotaCare, which is a clinic for low income families or those who do not have health insurance, distribution of dictionaries to third graders, offering Thanksgiving meals and Christmas gifts for Fullbright Elementary School students who are from low income families, giving out backpacks and school supplies for needy children, providing free eye exams and glasses for school children, and making and delivering bagged meals for the homeless.
On the international side the club has dug water wells for communities in Uganda; built a pediatric surgical center in Columbia; financed a mobile mammogram truck in India; provided and delivered fire trucks to Obregon, our sister city in Mexico; and supporting a orphanage also in Mexico.
Over the past 30 years, Rotary International in partnership with the World Health Organization, some two billion children have been immunized against the crippling disease, polio. Because of Rotary’s efforts and major funding from the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation, the world is on the verge of finally eradicating this horrible disease.
Millions of dedicated and devoted Rotarians in every corner of the world put others ahead of themselves every day working hard with love and compassion to fund and facilitate these amazing projects. In the club’s 60-year tenure it has become a family, bound together in service to mankind and with a deep love and respect for each other.