Local news

Here's a mid-year up-date for you to see where donations to the Rotary Club of Morden have been put to work locally.

St. Raphael’s Hospice received he largest donation. At Christmas, a significant amount of funds are raised by our week-end collections in Lower Morden Lane.
Local residents are famous for their Christmas Lights and garden displays which draw visitors from a wide area.
With their endorsement, our buckets of money are set aside to support St. Raphael's, and we aim to continue this in the future too.

Other local good causes that received support were:  

• Age UK Merton, Arthritis Care Dictionaries for Schools
• Friends of King George's Playing Fields
• Friends of Lower Morden
• Merton and Morden Guild Polio Plus,
• Wimbledon Youth Sailing Club, and
• Young Chef of the Year.

Students at the Perseid School Cricket Green, and West Wimbledon Primary were recipients of funds, enjoyed Xmas parties, and Santa's visits, and also joined in Rotary's Kids Out Day.

We also supported several individual appeals that were directed to our Rotary Club.  These helped one family to obtain a specially adapted wheelchair, another family to replace a vehicle essential for the school run, and also provided a specially designed spa bath for a severely disabled baby's benefit.

We were also privileged to meet and support several young people in Merton who were going abroad to work with charitable projects in Africa.

Do you know that EVERY SINGLE PENNY you give to Rotary is directed to
good causes?  We are one of very few charitable organisations that can say this, and that's why some notable people have sponsored and joined us.

For example, Bill and Melinda Gates have given The Rotary Foundation a
$100 million grant for polio eradication, and then increased that to $355 million. Rotary agreed to raise $200 million in matching funds but Rotarians worldwide in fact raised $228.7 million!  Going forward, the Gates Foundation will match two-to-one, up to US$35 million per year, every dollar Rotary commits for polio eradication up to 2018.  Although on a more modest your local Rotary Club discusses fully and carefully every funding appeal that is made to us.

We'd like to thank all of you who have contributed to our fund-raising in past years. Also, we are very grateful to all of you - particularly to the RP&WBRA Pavilion Club members who gave unused spectacles to our project in the schools and villages around Moshi, in Tanzania.

The spectacles were distributed at local churches, and you'll be pleased to know that those congregations would like to pass their thanks back to the thoughtful and generous people of Raynes Park and Morden. 

Like most voluntary organisations we'd very much like more people to join us to help continue our efforts, and you are welcome to join our weekly meetings on a Thursday evening at The Morden Brook. Why not look up Morden Rotary on Facebook?  Or our website which is also easy to fin.

Phil Watson, President, Rotary Club of Morden and Joss Ollett, PR , Rotary Club of Morden.