The Rotary Club of Saratoga Springs serves the community by providing funding for local organizations and youth scholarships, as well as through service-oriented events where the Club’s members offer their time and labor to an organization. The Club’s annual Home Show is its major fundraiser. The profits from the Home Show are distributed into four different areas: scholarships, support of local groups, major gifts to local organizations, and the global efforts of Rotary International.

A few examples of the associations and projects the local club has supported are: Babe Ruth Baseball, Saratoga Rowing Association, Double “H” Hole in the Woods Ranch, Franklin Community Center, Friends of Saratoga Battlefield, HIV/AIDS Coalition, Literacy Volunteers, Saratoga Hospital, Caffe Lena, Saratoga Springs YMCA and the Urban Cultural Park.

In addition to the Home Show, the Club sponsors service events throughout the year where club members help an organization accomplish a major clean-up or construction task. Your local Rotary also hosts cultural exchange programs, and provides scholarships to local students through the Rotary Club of Saratoga Springs Foundation.

On a worldwide level, Rotary is widely regarded as the world’s largest private provider of international educational scholarships. The Rotary Foundation provides each year some $90 million for international scholarships, cultural exchanges, and humanitarian projects that improve the quality of life for millions of people.

PolioPlus is Rotary’s program to work with national and international health organizations to eradicate polio by 2005. More than one billion children in developing nations have been immunized through PolioPlus grants. In the final push of the Polio Plus program, Rotary International has developed a special campaign to raise $80 million to support eradication efforts in the last places where polio is epidemic. Through this effort, we are hopeful that the scourge of polio will finally be eradicated worldwide. This campaign will give local Rotarians an opportunity to participate in perhaps the most important public health program in the world.