Welcome to our Website

From the President of the Rotary Club of Gillingham 2013/14

Welcome and thank you for logging on to our Website.

I’m Steve Tower the President of the Club for this Rotary Year. By profession I am a Chartered Mechanical Engineer and have spent my working life in the Energy Industries, my further education was at our local Technical College.

I live in Gillingham and originate from the Medway and Maidstone area, as does my wife Jacqui, we have two sons a granddaughter and a grandson.

I am a relative newcomer to Rotary only being a member for the last eight years, but I have been involved with the Gillingham Club for many years due to close friends who were involved, as were their parents.

I have been attracted to Rotary especially the Gillingham Club for many reasons, they have always had and still do a varied social and fellowship programme. They also aim to raise as much money as possible for Local and International charities by enjoying themselves in the company of like minded individuals. We also have an International reputation for delivering exceptional results from our targeted spending.

The membership of our club is stable at the present moment, but all organisations, ours included is always ready to welcome new members who are prepared to put time and effort into taking part and supporting our activities

Our main money raising event for the year is the Christmas Float which we tow around the streets of Gillingham and Rainham for 11 nights right up to Christmas Eve. One of the Saturdays in between we collect at Rainham Shopping Centre. The float is always well received and generously supported by local residents and their children and on many occasions their grandchildren.

As I have said above Rotary has an International reputation for ensuring that the money it has raised is used beneficially, with the absolute minimum amount taken out as overheads. Perhaps this is why the Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation has entrusted Rotary Foundation (RF) with in excess of  300 million US dollars to attempt to eradicate Polio in the last four countries in which it is still endemic. Polio eradication has been a prime RF project for the last 20 years.

The Gillingham Club ensures that all money raised by ourselves, from the general public for charity is donated 100% to those charities. Any overheads are covered from within the club by the members. We also attempt to concentrate on local charities that will benefit local people.

However, every year we do have an International Project, we have partner clubs in France (Enghien) and Germany (Hameln) and we take it in turns to nominate an International Project. With the 3 clubs participation the project normally benefits by about 4500 Euros.

As part of our International and social programme we meet with members of our partner clubs Enghien and Hameln once a year, we do this by taking it in turns to meet in the locality of our own clubs. But in the fourth year we meet at a neutral venue.

Please browse the Website to look at our various social and fundraising activities I hope you will find them interesting and wish to find out more. Also please use our direct connection to Amazon, all purchases made through this connection will benefit the club by up to 5% of the purchase price. I can assure you that all money that comes into the club in this way will be donated to a charitable cause.