Rotary in the Rissingtons

Established in 2019 Rotary in the Rissingtons is the new face of Rotary, small, flexible and local community focused. We are what is known as a Satellite club and attached to North Cotswold Rotary, the main Club in the area. As the name implies we are focused on the four Rissington villages of Great, Little, Wyck and Upper which lie to the east of Bourton on the Water in Gloucestershire.

We are based in the Upper Rissington Village Hall where we meet on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of each month. With ten Founding Members we have grown to fifteen by the summer of 2023. Unusually for a Rotary Club we have more ladies than gentlemen, a perfect rceipe for great meetings. Not for us dinners and speeches, we major on good wine, crisps of choice and 90 minutes of lively discussion. This results in us enjoying a bargain basement subscription rate of just £15 per month. In the community we are clearly identified by our purple attire.

We like to think we fight above our weight and do not shy away from taking on challenges, the majority of which are local to our area. We have worked, and continue to work, with the The Rissington School on varying projects from allotments to funding extra curricula activities. We have provided financial support to Riding for the Disabled, laptops to Gloucestershire Young Carers; our current efforts being directed to Home Start who support familes in the local area. We have an international flavour in that we work with “Tools for Self Reliance” collecting handtools for Tanzania and we support the Rotary “Purple 4 Polio” initative eradicating polio in the Middle East. We raise the funds to support our work through providing “tea and cakes” at Chastleton House and through seeking grant funding. This is just a taste of the work we do.

Our first main project 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. Classes are run outdoors here when weather permits and the garden is in use 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. Each year we work with local schools to support P4P in various ways. We have asked them to wear purple, purchasing and planting a purple crocus in the school grounds all supervised by our members. We have raised over £500 for the P4P effort over the years but more importantly raised awareness with the pupils of P4P and that they could directly help children around the world to be protected from this horrible disease.

On the personal side, the members enjoying relaxing social evenings away from “work” and their achievements have been recognised by Rotary through the presentation of prestigious awards.

If what you read floats your boat or you would like to talk about the work we do then please give us a call on 07918 163960 or e-mail to ritrinfo@gmail.com. If you fancy a glass of wine or something else, come and join the discussion at the Upper Rissington Village Hall on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of each month at 7.30pm.

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'