By Alison Stanton
Thanks to the hard work and dedication of the members of the Kyrene Corridor Rotary Club, third grade students in low income level school districts will receive dictionaries to help them with their schoolwork.
This is just one of the many community service projects that the 11 or so members regularly take part in.
John Lamont, a south Tempe resident and president of the Kyrene Corridor Rotary Club, said the dictionary donation is the club’s largest project and fundraiser.
“We raise money by selling snacks at the Tempe Movies in the Park twice a year to help pay for the dictionaries,” Lamont said, adding that the club—which he describes as a “dynamic eclectic group”— donates about 2,400 dictionaries to various schools throughout Tempe and Phoenix.
Other monthly service projects that the Kyrene Corridor Rotary Club regularly tackles involve packing food boxes and working with Habitat for Humanity.
“One of our newest projects is sorting donated medical supplies for Project C.U.R.E. These supplies are then sent to other countries to be used for surgeries,” Lamont said.
Although the Kyrene Corridor Rotary Club is one of the smallest of its kind, Lamont said this doesn’t stop them from accomplishing a lot of work through their various projects.
“We did a group hike and helped raise over $3,200 for the End Polio Now campaign, which is Rotary’s largest project,” Lamont said.
The club also has four Paul Harris fellows as members who donate over $1,000 a year to the Rotary Foundation, and almost every week Lamont said speakers from various community organizations come to speak with him and the other members about their programs and how the club can help.
No matter what type of project Lamont and the other members are working on, they all fall under the Rotary Club’s central goal of Service Above Self, which he said involves making sure they give and create sustainable, supportable projects both locally and around the world that help to make peoples’ lives better.
“Our goal as a club, and as the largest humanitarian non-political organization in the world, is to solve problems for humanity’s sake,” Lamont said.
“We want to do things that help others regardless of political or national elements. The majority of the world’s population is poor, has no clean water supply, no electricity, and no safe housing. Our goal is to put forth ideals and projects that chip away at these things, making the world a better place.”
For more information about the Kyrene Corridor Rotary Club, or to learn how to join, visit www.tempevolunteers.org. Lamont can be contacted directly at 602-525-5464 or at jlamont@cox.net.
Good reads, Good deeds
