PROJECTS CARRIED OUT THIS YEAR BY RIBBLESDALE ROTARIANS

The Rotary year starts on July 1st

Bonfire.
One of our major projects is carried out with all the other service clubs in the Ribble Valley.
The Rotary Club of Clitheroe, Clitheroe Round Table, Clitheroe Lions and the Rotary Club of Pendle View.

This project is the Annual Castle Bonfire and Firework Display.
It is held on the Castle Field in Clitheroe and the next will be on Saturday the 1st of November 2008.
The attendance is usually around 5000 people and has proven to be a good community service project fulfilling the object of providing a safe environment for a bonfire and large firework display.
The event is sponsored by Castle Cement and help given by many other small companies in the area to whom we are most grateful. The profit last year was £9000 of which £4,500 was been given to Derian House and £4,500 to the North West Air Ambulance.

Other Projects and Events

• A Sports Night will be held on the 8th of December 2008 at the Pendle Hotel, Chatburn where other local service clubs are always invited.
  We carry our friendly games such as putting, darts, pool, whist, pelmonism and dominoes, with a bottle of wine for the winners..

• A The Christmas Partywill be held on the 15th of December with wives, partners and guests and will be entertained by an excellent magician arranged by our own magician member John Pye.

• Along with the other service clubs, our members deliver Christmas Parcels to people living alone and over 80, which are provided by the Clitheroe Mayor's Welfare Fund.

• To commemmorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Rotary by Paul Harris in Chicago in 1905 we produced and erected a viewing stone. This is a stainless steel plaque on a plinth of local limestone and sandstone donated by Castle Cement and Waddington Fell Quarry and has been positioned by the River Ribble at Edisford. The plaque denotes all the places of interest along the Ribble from source to sea. This has received many favourable comments. The picture shows the plaque being unveiled by local dignitaries.
  We are to hoping to produce a similar set of information tablets on the Castle Keep during the restoration work this year.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• We have collections for charity each year at all the three Clitheroe supermarkets, to which the public give most generously.

• Our next planned collection is on April 11th and 12th 2008 at Sainsburys.

• In November each year we sell poppies at Booths, which raise well over a thousand pounds in the one day.

• The next collection is at Booths Supermarket is on Friday and Saturday the .
  

  Several members regularly drive the MS bus on a Tuesday to transport members to the local Contact Club and for days out to various interesting locations.. Some also use their own transport to transport old people for a lunch each Wednesday to the Pendle Club.

• Several members and wives attend the annual District Conference which is to be held in the Isle of Man in March 2008.

• A youth will be sent on the Rotary RYPEN course held at Grange Over Sands this year and a disabled person will be sent on the Calvert Trust week at Bassenthwaite.

Support
Support is being given this coming year to;
Calvert Trust, an outward bound type course for the disabled held in Keswick.
Sight Savers, East Lancs Hospice, Rotary Foundation, Pendle Club, Cross Roads, Life Education Centres, Christies Hospital etc.
At our annual collection at Tesco Supermarket last November we collected £840, which was used to send a disabled person and helper on a place at the Calvert Trust, which is an Outward Bound type course for disabled people held near Keswick.
This autumn we are hoping to host our second "Hobbies Exhibition", where we hope that many clubs and organisations in the area will show their hobbies and past times to encourage more invovment in these activities.
The event was held last year at the Grammar School on Chatburn Road, but are now hoping to be abe to use the St Mary's centre, Clitheroe .
In order to cover the cost of the premises, exhibitors will be asked to pay £10 and visitors £1 at the door.
This looks like it will become a very popular event.


One of our collections at Booths last autumn raised £705.
Donations have been made recently to, Shelter Box Trust, Heart Start, Pendle Club, British Heart Foundation, Life Education Centres, East Lancs Hospice, Cross Roads and Christies Hospital.

Marathon Cycle Ride
Our sixty three year old vice president, Richard Dugdale, in 2006 made a trip with Roger Stretton, another Rotarian from Gt Harwood and Rishton, on his bicycle to complete the European section of the North Sea Cycle Route. This started in Rotterdam and ended in Burgen, Norway and covered 2,100 miles.
Richard collected sponsorship money for Life Education Centres for this five week marathon and raised over £2200. His exploits can be followed by logging on to his BLOG at 'pennyfarthing.blog.co.uk' which he updated regularly at internet cafes on the way. He encoutered severe headwinds, rain, pain and steep hills on this lengthy adventure. Log onto his blog now.
He also completed a 100 mile ride in aid of Christie's Hospital, Manchester in early September, which raised £150 plus gift aid, rode the first stage of the Tour de France from London to Canterbury and more recently the Legbreaker Challenge in Staffordshire.









The club continues to be involved in the interclub Crown Green Bowls tournament during the summer and usually find we are at a mid placing in the championship. However the best outcome of this tournament is the fellowship that this engeders.


Through Rotary we hope to form strong friendships, both within our club and throughout the world and also hope to make the world a better place as a result of our actions, especially for those in need of basic requirements such as water and sanitation..