SERVICE PROJECTS

Each year, through the Owensboro Rotary Club Foundation and Rotary District 6710's matching grant program, our club partners with local organizations in projects that benefit the community and echo Rotary's commitment to improving health, providing quality education, improving the environment, and alleviating poverty. 

Recent projects:

• 2020 - The Owensboro Rotary Club partnered with the Owensboro Family YMCA to reopen the YMCA’s Y Wee Care short term supervised childcare program. Read more about our Y WEE CARE PROJECT.
• 2022-23 - The club partnered with Girls Inc. of Owensboro-Daviess County to renovate the organization's After School Academy classroom.
• 2023 - The club provided funds to equip the laundry room of a newly constructed residential facility for homeless high school students and assisted with painting the facility. 

Rotary Youth Fund - The Rotary Youth Fund program helps students prepare for the beginning of school each year and provides continued assistance throughout the school year.  The Youth Fund provides funding for school supplies, haircuts, physicals, vision exams and glasses, dental care, immunizations and much more.  The program is funded by the Owensboro Rotary Club and the Hager Foundation and is implemented through the Family Resource/Youth Services Centers of the Owensboro Public Schools and Daviess County Public Schools.

Honor Flight - The Owensboro Rotary Club has used proceeds from its annual Bourbon Ball fundraiser to help underwrite the cost of sending local WWII, Korean War and Vietnam War veterans to Washington D.C. to visit their memorials. Veterans from the Owensboro area are transported to Louisville, where they join other Kentucky veterans for the flights organized by the Honor Flight Bluegrass Chapter.

Owensboro Rotary "PlayZeum" - In 2002 the Owensboro Rotary Club adopted the major challenge of constructing of an indoor playground for area families.  The facility, housed at the Owensboro Area Museum of Science and History, opened in 2005.  The playground provides children, their parents, grandparents or caregivers a place to play when inclement weather would otherwise keep them indoors. Owensboro Rotarians consider the "PlayZeum" an important investment in healthier and happier families.

Accelerated Reader Project - The club acknowledges its appreciation to weekly program speakers by donating books from the schools' Accelerated Reader Lists to the local public library in their honor. A bookplate affixed to the inside front cover of each book bears the name of the speaker and a place for his/her signature along with a notation that the item was donated to the library in his/her honor.

The Owensboro Rotary Club also participates in community service projects such as Salvation Army bell ringing and reading with the members of Girls Incorporated.