Committees

The Community and Vocational Committee is responsible for organising Club activities in response to the needs of the local Community.  Activities generally fall into one of two main groups – ‘Hands-on’ Service and Fund-raising to help support local Charities and Organisations in their own service activities.

The direct service activities include providing –
            .   Drivers for Meals-on-Wheels
            .   Marshals for the annual Harrogate Theatre Restoration Fun Run,             
                St Michael’s Hospice Summer Gala and the Knaresborough Bed Race

Local charities receive some financial support – generally to purchase much-needed equipment through Club Charity funding and kind public donations. The latter are from ‘bag-packing’ events and the Christmas Grotto held at the Starbeck Wm. Morrison Supermarket. 
Charities to have benefited this Rotary Year have included –
     .  Yorkshire Air Ambulance
     .  Harrogate Talking Newspaper
     .  Harrogate Carers’ Resource
     .  Harrogate Gateway Football Club
     .  Harrogate (Supporting Older People) Project
     .  Harrogate and Knaresborough Toy Library
     .  Local Group of the Motor Neurone Disease Society

Additionally, all members assist in the staging of the annual R C of Harrogate Nidderdale Charity Walk, which enables walkers to raise money for their chosen Charity or Organisation.  More details are to be found on the 'Charity Walk Page’.

The Rotary Club of Harrogate has operated an Environmental Committee since 1980.  It felt that Rotary had an important role to play in this key aspect of our lives.

One of the most successes of the Committee’s activities has been working in conjunction with Harrogate Borough Council in the provision of over 600 trees in and around Harrogate, but mainly on The Stray, for people to acquire as a special memento.  Usually they are purchased in memory of people who have died, but they are also bought by families, or to commemorate a wedding, birth, or other special occasion.  Full details of the scheme are available on this web site.  Please contact us if you want to consider a similar scheme in your area.

The Club was eager to celebrate 100 years of Rotary, and approached Harrogate Borough Council to some spare land on which a small wood could be planted.  Without making any promises, the Council in turn asked the Club to manage a 62 acre wood, known locally as The Pinewoods.  This is a very sensitive area, being situated between the Valley Gardens and RHS Harlow Carr Gardens.  Lack of funding resources has led to a decline in the woods, but a Charitable Trust, the Pinewoods Conservation Group, was formed following a public meeting.  Rotary continued to have a close association with the Group, having its chairman for the first three years and another member on the Executive Committee.  The Group were able to raise over £30,000 in those three years mainly from other charities, this was used to make a new footpath linking the two Gardens (and which now also forms the start of the Dalesway Walk, which used to start in Ilkley until this final link was made). Many other projects such as signage, information boards, bulb planting, Balsam ‘bashing’, bird and bat boxes, were undertaken, all of which would not have been possible without the Group having been formed.  The Group even had to successfully stop a wide cycle route being put through the wood, and an attempt by the RHS to make part of the wood into a car park!

All this hard work reaped its reward when the Council offered a 4 acre field adjacent to the Pinewoods to be made into a Centenary Wood.  Over the last 3 years work has been going on there with over 2500 trees and hedge plants having been planted. In addition by this coming springtime 75 specimen trees, all of different native or European varieties, will have been planted.  This will be labelled and eventually used for educational purposes.  There will be a need to improve access to the site for pushchairs, wheelchairs etc all to have easy access, and paths will also need to be constructed within the site once the trees have started to establish themselves.

Both within the Pinewoods and the Rotary Centenary Wood, help has been given by groups of young men and women from the nearby Army Foundation College, whose members are ‘required’ to do the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme as part of their training.  In addition school children have been involved in planting the trees, and also the 2 tons of daffodil bulbs kindly given by a benefactor.

We also keep a close eye on all aspects of the environment and even threatened at one time to publish photographs of local eye sores!  However since then things were turned round to the extent that Harrogate won a Gold Medal in the International Europe in Bloom Competition 2 years ago, partly aided by the team of judges being taken partly on golf buggies and partly by walking through the Pinewoods seeing the work of the Group.  Since then the Rotary Centenary Wood has also featured in winning the Yorkshire in Bloom Competition.

The Rotary Club of Harrogate’s Youth and Foundation Committee is the link between the club and Rotary International’s Foundation Trust, which is RI’s own trust fund that supports world wide activity.  Under this banner the club supports such activities as: Polio Plus – a scheme that has all but eradicated polio around the world;  Group Study Exchange – where a vocational exchange for young business and professional men and women between the ages of 25 and 40 provides travel grants for teams to exchange visits between paired areas in different countries so that team members experience the host country's institutions and ways of life, observe their own vocations as practiced abroad, develop personal and professional relationships, and exchange ideas;  Ambassadorial Scholars -  whose purpose is to further international understanding and friendly relations among people of different countries, and while abroad, serve as ambassadors of goodwill to the people of the host country and give presentations about their homelands to Rotary clubs and other groups; and the Rotary Peace Fellowship scheme – which inspires people to work for a culture of peace and tolerance while enhancing their capacity, knowledge, and skill to do so by generating interaction between practitioners and academics and in our case supporting students who attend peace studies at Bradford’s centre of excellence. 

Closer to home the committee is involved in selecting students for the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards programme [] and also the Ocean Youth Sailing scheme [].  Through these projects the club works closely with Harrogate High, Harrogate Grammar and Rossett schools.  We are proud to be associated with numerous other youth schemes and provide sponsorship to both groups and individuals undertaking charitable work at home and overseas.

Ocean Youth Sailing Trust
Following the successes in recent years, the Rotary Club of Harrogate is looking to sponsor two young people to participate in a voyage on the sail training ship the James Cook which is operated by the Ocean Youth Sailing Trust.  The passages vary in length from 3 – 5 days and it is normally possible to find one to fit in with each candidates wishes.

Whilst on-board James Cook the lucky participants will be taught to sail an ocean going yacht.  They will learn how to navigate, how to read charts and nautical almanacs, lay a course and to check their work against GPS fixes.  They will be taught big vessel handling, how to steer, how to set and trim the sails (it takes 4 people to pull up the sails of around 2,500 square feet!).  They will learn boat management, cooking a meal at sea for 18 people and many other maritime related disciplines including knots and lashings.  Teamwork and the development of leadership skills will be fundamental to all activities.  All the staff on board are suitably qualified and very experienced; they ensure that the safety of the children is paramount.  Further details of the Ocean Youth Sailing can be found on www.sailjamescook.com .

Teenagers between the ages of 14 to 16 are eligible to apply, and need no previous experience.  Applicants will be selected by Rotarians from Harrogate.  Anyone interested in finding out more, or applying for the James Cook experience should contact Graham Archer via Ascot House or by e- mail lgarcher@btinternet.com.  Applications will be considered at any time; students are sponsored every years and there is no closing date.

International Service includes      -working together as part of R I and RIBI
                                                     -working together with other clubs in 1040
                                                     -local initiatives

International Service involves      -fund raising either by using club funds or directly
                                                     -hands-on support
                                                     -promoting international understanding

We are on target to achieve in all of these areas

We have committed £250 from Club funds to IMPACT, an RIBI preferred charity which takes a mobile hospital to people in India and East Africa.

We have raised £450 from a collection in the Victoria Centre in Harrogate and allocated a further £450 from club funds for the purchase of two Shelter Boxes which are held in reserve in the UK for shipment to the next disaster. We are also proposing to fill an AQUA Box with clothes, tools and toiletries for a similar purpose.

We have committed £250 for the Yorkshire School in Sri Lanka, built with Yorkshire Rotary money following the tsunami, and raised £320 from a mulled wine stall at the Soroptomists Christmas Fayre for international charity work.