Rotary in the Rissingtons

You will get a warm welcome if you join us. Go to our Facebook Page or complete the contact form mentioning 'Rotary in the Rissingtons'

Meet two of our members in the video below talking about the Brian Honess Award - a Rotary in the Rissingtons creation!

Rotary in the Rissingtons (RitR) was set up three years ago as a satellite group of North Cotswolds Rotary. With 12 members and growing, our aim is to work to serve the local community.

We work closely with local schools to improve their environment and support extra-curricular projects. We support our parent club activities, and do our own fundraising as well. Whilst this has been curtailed during the pandemic, we continue to run projects supporting the local community.

We meet the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month in the Upper Rissington Village Hall, but more recently online through Zoom. Informality is our byword. We don't offer dinner, simply a 90 minute meeting every two weeks to plan our activities and socialise, sometimes with invited guests or speakers. We follow a basic meeting structure to keep us on track. Our refreshment is wine and crisps or of course soft drinks for drivers or anyone else who doesnt want wine!

This keeps our costs down to a minimum which means we only charge £12 per month membership fee. All are welcome! You don't need to live in the Rissingtons either.

We sponsor and operate a local award scheme called the 'Brian Honess Award' in memory of a past member of our parent club who did a lot of work in the community. This honours annually anyone who went above and beyond to work for their local community.

Watch our Chairperson Andrew and member Margaret talking about how the award works here:

Our main project over the past 12 months was to build a working garden for the local primary school. This was waste land before we started, we built it all from scratch and shared the purchase price of materials with the PTA. Started in 2019, the timingh has been has been so fortunate, during the pandemic many classes are run outdoors and the garden has been in use every day for classes, recreation and learning about nature. We worked with the local Mens Shed who built outdoor furniture from discarded pallets, school desks and storage boxes!

We have also supported the International Rotary initiative Purple for Polio. All the pupils at the local school were encouraged to support P4P by wearing purple and purchasing a purple crocus corm which they went on to plant in the school grounds, supervised by our members. We raised over £185 for the P4P effort but more importantly raised awareness with the pupils of P4P and thhat they could directly help children to be protected from this horrible disease.