The Rotary Club of Madison County was chartered in February, 2004 and welcomed as a member of Rotary International. With 40 active members, we meet every Thursday morning at 7:30 AM at Pittman Hall on the Mars Hill College campus. We enjoy a great breakfast, much good fellowship, an interesting speaker, and discussions of current and future service projects.

We have an array of projects that focus on youth activities, community service, and International service. In the area of youth activities, each year we give a dictionary to every 3rd grade student in the county, we sponsor the Interact Club at Madison High School (a junior Rotary Club), we send students to our Rotary Youth Leadership Assembly each year, we teach Junior Achievement classes in the Madison County School system, recognize the student of the month at Madison High and employee of the month of the school system, and give every third grade student in Madison County a dictionary each October.

Some of our community service projects have included purchasing a refrigerator for My Sisters Place, ringing the bells for the Salvation Army at Christmastime, spearheading two river cleanups, initiating an employee of the month for employees of Madison County, co-sponsoring "Kids Voting" with the League of Women Voters, Providing Christmas (including presents and dinner) to needy families in Madison County, and contributing to the Beacon of Hope to benefit flood victims.

On the International scene, we sent Spanish language children's books and several hundred pairs of socks to an orphanage in Ecuador, supplies and personal items to our troops in Iraq, and sponsored a Youth Exchange student to Switzerland. We will also be hosting a Group Study Exchange Team from the Czech Republic this spring.

Rotary International is the largest and oldest Service organization in the world with over 1,200,000 members in 32,000 Clubs in 166 countries around the world. Our motto is "Service above self-he profits most who serves the best."

If you would like to attend a meeting or are interested in obtaining additional information, please contact Neil St. Clair at 689-1462.