From the day of our founding, our Club has focused its community service lens on finding ways to assist the many services offered for children, seniors and the disadvantaged in Ottawa South, as well as those located elsewhere.
Over the past 50 years, RCOS has made significant contributions locally to the Kidney Research Centre, Easter Seals, Riverside Hospital, the Children's Aid Society, the Shepherds of Good Hope, Operation Go Home, Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind, the Ottawa Children's Treatment Centre, Fairy Godmother, Salvation Army, Banff Community House, Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation, to name just a small number of hundreds of locally essential good causes we have supported.
More than simply donating cash, our Club's members are often counted among the many volunteers who contribute their time and their expertise to help these charities with their work, from serving meals at The Mission, to laying down the floor for a new basketball court at the Ottawa Police Youth Centre, building a new cabin at the Y's summer Camp Davern, to ringing the bells at a Salvation Army Christmas Kettle or driving a car for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.
Our annual charity golf tournament, held at the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club, is a major fundraiser with 50% of the proceeds going to the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation. We're proud to have donated more than $600,000 thus far.
In July 1986, Rotel, a 50-room Rotary motel, opened its doors on the grounds of the Ottawa Hospital's General Campus on Smyth Road. Rotel was, and is, the biggest single project ever undertaken by the RCOS, whose members helped raise the nearly $2 million required to construct it. The building offers clean, modern and low-cost accommodation for out-patients who are undergoing tests or treatment at any of the hospitals in Ottawa, or for their family members during what is often a stressful time in their lives. Rotel is run very efficiently and provides very affordable accommodation — in the more than three decades since its doors opened, its room rates have only increased once. Since Rotel's opening, our Club has provided it with its Board of Directors.
A more recent large project is Polo in the Park Ottawa. A fun family event which brings the social and dynamic sport of polo to Wesley Clover Parks each summer. The event has raised money for the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health, the Queensway-Carleton Hospital Foundation, TROTT (Therapeutic Riding Association of Ottawa) and Wounded Warriors Canada.
Internationally, our Club has helped build and equip homes in the Dominican Republic, schools in Central America, a hospital in Ghana and, very soon, we will be able to point with great pride to our role in helping consign polio to the list of diseases eradicated from the face of the earth. Because of its enormous international membership, Rotary traditionally shines in times of disaster. Frequently it is a local Rotary Club that is first out of the blocks in helping establish links with National Capital Rotary Clubs through which aid, money and emergency supplies are delivered to an earthquake, hurricane or flood-stricken zone halfway around the world.
The Rotary Club of Ottawa South was proud to join with other Ottawa area Rotary clubs in building the state-of-the-art Ottawa Rotary Home, a respite center for families of children and adults requiring constant care. We also assisted with the all-abilities park and playground in Brewer Park to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Rotary International. It is projects like these that help serve as a lasting legacy of Rotary's role in the community for whom we share a volunteer and fund raising commitment that is best exemplified by the Rotary motto, "Service Above Self."
SERVICE ABOVE SELF
Ottawa, ON K1V 2G3
Canada