Membership
The Rotary Club of Comber was founded in 1986 by a bunch of enthusiasts from Newtownards Rotary. Since inception it has been a lively and very active Club. Today there are about 30 of us and we meet every Monday throughout the year at 6:00 fo 6:30 pm for a meal at Balloo House - except during July and on Public and Bank Holidays. It’s expected that members attend at least half these meetings - which may sound a lot - but most attend a great deal more, simply because we enjoy it.
Part of the enjoyment comes from the informative and entertaining speakers we hear from, but mostly it’s attributed to the fellowship that develops. Rotary presents a range of opportunities to widen friendships beyond our own club such as social and non-too serious sporting contests. Comber has special relationships with the Rotary Clubs of Yate near Bristol, and with the Rotary Club of Biggar in Scotland – who we visit and have them visit Comber in alternating years.
Service Ethos
But the Club has a more serious purpose of Service which it fulfils in a number of ways.
We help young people develop their skills and knowledge through the Northern Ireland Young Musician of the Year – a head-to-head contest, now in its 18th year, to find the best of Northern Ireland’s young musical talent. Through it we have raised in excess of £70,000 for charity – most of it donated to the NI Music Therapy Trust, the NI Cancer Fund for Children and in earlier days to the NSPCC. This work has brought its own reward to the Club through recognition from the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action.
Annually we seek out young people from local schools and youth groups to compete with contemporaries from across Ireland in a youth leadership contest for the opportunity to join others on a visit the EU Parliament in Strasbourg. And every year Comber Rotary also helps prepare for employment senior pupils from local high schools with a lifelike experience of what to expect when they apply for a job through a programme of Mock Interviews.
Comber Rotary is the driving force behind creating and sustaining the Comber Drugs Awareness Group (CODAG) - which uses two mobile classrooms and trained educators to deliver health education programmes to schools. We have provided help for local youth – for example we played a major role in the formation of the Enler Youth Club, and more recently supported the Killinchy Activity Group with funding to buy equipment and maps associated with their running the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme
Local and Environmental
To raise awareness of environmental issues Comber Rotary encourages and supports “green” projects in local schools and organisations. We are currently engaged in enlisting the help of pupils to build nest boxes – from materials supplied by the club – and to take them home or give them to their friends to put in their gardens to be aware of nature and encourage breeding programmes in threatened native species of garden birds. And in the past we have been engaged in various tree-planting ventures around Comber and its vicinity, and have provided both financial and practical help to elderly residents in making their homes more comfortable.
Last year we worked with Ards Council to set-up the traditional Christmas tree in Comber Square as a Remembrance Tree – through which we provided a much appreciated outlet for those wanting to remember loved-ones in a tangible way at Christmas-time – and also incidentally raised funds for local charities. Encouraged by local people we plan to repeat and improve on the idea for this year.
This year we helped Castle Espie, through facilitating funding of £1,500 from the Bombardier-Shorts Foundation, which we have complemented with a further £1,000 from Rotary District simplified grant
Global
And farther afield we helped Rombo, a remote village in Kenya where there is acute need for a fresh water supply and educational facilities for the children. We raised £1,600 for them through charity lunches involving Rotarians and friends, and this amount has been doubled to £3,2000 through matching grant from The Rotary Foundation - of which, more later
COMBER ROTARY contributes to immediate aid when there is need throughout the world. When disaster strikes we pay for and can draw-down a variety of pre-packaged aid boxes from Rotary warehouses for consignment as appropriate to where they are needed. Some of these focus on essential provisions for hot and cold climates, others on water purification, and others on providing emergency shelter. Comber’s contribution was among the first shipment of these latter “shelterboxes” to get through to victims of the recent Burma cyclone.
And we’ve also on occasion enlisted the help of pupils from local schools to help pack “shoeboxes” - a means whereby gifts can be sent through the established Rotary network, guaranteeing delivery to genuinely needy children and families, largely in Eastern Europe. Participants in the past have included Comber Primary School, St Mary’s Comber, St Mary’s Ballygowan, Carrickmannon, Moneyreagh, and Killinchy Primary Schools.
As we embark on a new Rotary year, Comber has set itself a challenging agenda both at home and abroad, including local awareness campaigns related to Alzheimer’s and organ donation, and seeking young ambassadors to compete for the benefits or Rotary-funded international study visits.
Internationally we will be joining fellow-Rotarians worldwide in their last push to eliminate polio from the face of the Earth. Rotary’s “Polio Plus” campaign has been running with this objective since 1985. In that time it has contributed $633 million and we have seen the incidence of polio decline by 99%. Now, with the promise of matching funding from the Bill Gates Foundation if Rotary International can raise a further $100 million towards the cause in the next three years, Comber will join the 1.2 million Rotarians worldwide in rising to this challenge.
Interested in knowing more?
Anyone interested in knowing more about membership of Comber Rotary should make contact via e-mail to president@comberrotary.org
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