Donations

The Rotary Club of Chicago Southeast (RCCSE), Chartered on March 25th, 1997, was founded to address both local and international issues and concerns. Since that time, the RCCSE has sponsored youth career fairs, donated thousands of dictionaries to 3rd grade students in schools throughout the South Side, initiated tutoring programs for students in grammar, middle and high school, sponsored youth leadership programming and organizations for grammar, middle and high school students, donated funds and equipment to local food pantries, supported community gardens and supported coat drives for military veterans, actively supported the Annual Jesse White Foundation Trunk Party, in addition to many other service opportunities since our inception. We will continue to live by our motto as a Rotary Club of "Service Above Self" and ask that you assist us by donating to our Local Community Projects.

Even though the United States was determined "Polio-free" of the wild Polio virus in 1977, the disease has continued to ravage other parts of the world relentlessly. Fortunately, in 1985, Rotary International made global Polio eradication its top priority with an intial commitment of $120 million US, and with the help of the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, has helped administer the oral polio vaccine to over 2.5 billion children worldwide. The continent of Africa was just determined "Polio-free" on August 25th, 2020, which leaves only 2 countries in the world left that still are considered to have the wild Polio virus endemic: Pakistan and Afghanistan. The PolioPlus initiative needs your help to bring that number down to 0 as we continue to seek funds to totally eradicate this disease off of the face of the earth for good.

During the Holiday Season each year since 2008, the Rotary Club of Chicago Southeast (RCCSE) has had the honor of receiving the generosity of the Grundy County Department of Waste Management in Morris, IL by picking up new and gently used toys and other gifts that they have collected during the months of November and December for the surrounding community. They put out the call far and wide and allows the RCCSE to "play Santa" by distributing these gifts to churches, shelters and community-based organizations throughout the southside and south suburbs of Chicago. The RCCSE uses funds collected to defray the cost of transporting the gifts from Morris, IL (usually via a U-Haul) and to cover other expenses incurred by volunteers during this annual service event.

Since 2012, the Rotary Club of Chicago Southeast (RCCSE) has attempted to be a "part of the solution" to stemming the violence in the streets of Chicago's South and West Sides. The RCCSE helped spearhead a number of the Rotary International District 6450's Partners for Peace projects, including city-wide Peace Summits in 2012-2014 and Peace Jams in partnership with L.Y.R.I.C. Mentoring. More recently, the RCCSE has worked with other Rotary Clubs in the Chicagoland Area and around the world to support the L.Y.R.I.C. Mentoring-inspired Emcee Skool by initiating a $50K Global Grant via The Rotary Foundation to assist in the training of Peace Ambassadors, who use the art form of Spoken Word and Hip Hop to work with youth in the communities of Chicago to build a Culture of Peace, developing new and innovative techniques to foster Conflict Prevention and Conflict Resolution. We see this work as instrumental to who we are as a Rotary Club, a part of an international community of Rotary Clubs that have helped to foster Peace throughout the world for over a century, and we need your help to continue this great work.

This program provides individuals, small business owners, and corporations a means to support the Rotary Club of Chicago Southeast (RCCSE) in its efforts to provide service to the local and international communities and causes the Club supports. The $100.00 annual voluntary contribution provides you, the Rotary Business Supporter (RBS), a business ad on our club’s web site for one year (which meets guidelines and approval from the RCCSE Board) and a contribution to a fundraising program of your choice. All, or a portion of this donation, may be tax-deductible.

As one of the few Rotary Clubs with members all of African Descent in the United States, the Rotary Club of Chicago Southeast (RCCSE) sees our connection to the continent of African as necessary and unapologetic. We have supported micro-enterprise by helping fund solar ovens in villages in Kenya for small business development, sponsored a team and sent a local community pediatrician as a part of that team to preform cleft pallet and cleft lip surgeries in central Nigeria and are currently working on a project in southern Nigeria to enhance the capacity of a community library to better serve university-bound students to provide them the tools and resources to prepare for and apply to degree programs at institutions around the world. These efforts require funding from multiple sources, not the least of which is contributions from everyday people to support the efforts and aspirations of people around the world to work for a better life.

Every year, Rotary Districts around the world sponsor Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) Youth Leadership Camps to be attended by high school aged community youth to provide them experiential leadership activities and training around practical leadership and life-based skills. Students attend a four day camp held in a wilderness setting and are joined by talented students from all over the world. All of the camp's activities emphasize leadership skills, personal development, and citizenship in addition to recreational and cultural activities. Rotary Clubs sponsor students to attend, and we need your help to cover these sponsorships for our community youth to attend this annual Leadership Camp.

In late 2018, the Rotary Club of Chicago Southeast (RCCSE) started discussing an initiative to support capacity-building efforts in the country of Sierra Leone, a country with both a history of violence and war-torn by the ravages of war, but also a country with a rich history of being the focal point of African Diaspora relations with Freetown serving as the epicenter of the reclamation effort of Africa's rich but oppressed past. The Club started by supporting a drive for shoes for village youth, which grew into an initiative to support local efforts for self-sufficiency and education, specifically by supporting a book drive for a village-based community center. This effort has grown into the actual construction of a physical library with the RCCSE leading the way to fund its construction and eventual completion. We are in the final phases of completing the library and hope to have an official opening of the library int he town of Bumpe, Sierra Leone within the next year, but we still need your support to complete the project.

General Donation to Rotary Club of Chicago Southeast Programs (You can specify your own amount)