Flags for Heroes
Where do fundraising proceeds go? Lots of places!
- 30% of this year's proceeds will be dedicated to assist in the solution for homelessness in the Portland area.
- Portland Rotary annually funds scholarships for students from each of Portland’s high schools and for students attending the University of Southern Maine who are a part of USM’s New Mainer Community. Each school chooses a scholarship recipient who demonstrate leadership in Rotary’s value of service to others both inside and outside of their school community.
- Every June Portland Rotary funds up to ten high school students entering their junior year to attend an intensive leadership training camp at Camp Hinds in Raymond, Maine. Over 140 students from Maine and New Hampshire spend four days exploring the intricacies of leadership and how it arises in the real world. Activities focus on team building, group problem solving, and interpersonal management within project teams. For many, their time at camp can become a life changing experience that helps individuals increase their self-confidence, enhance leadership capabilities, and provides tools of communication. The result is an increase in self-efficacy, and the ability to enhance the communities they are involved in.
- In conjunction with Lyseth Elementary School during the school year and with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southern Maine during the summer months, Portland Rotary provides adult readers during daytime teaching hours as well as take home books for elementary school age students. As part of their focus on literacy development, Rotarians are invited into classrooms to read out loud to groups of students and to assist them with vocabulary and word meanings.
- Internationally, Portland Rotary is actively volunteering in the Dominican Republic where it has partnerships with local organizations who help some of the most marginalized people with hearing aids, prosthetic limbs and clean water. Each year, several Portland Rotarians travel to the Dominican Republic to help install water purification systems in rural villages and to assist local doctors treat patients needing hearing aids as well as prosthetic hands due to amputations arising mainly from work related accidents. Rotarians use fundraising proceeds to help procure the necessary supplies of hearing aids and prosthetics, which are then donated to the most needy at no cost.
- Portland Rotary is an active supporter of Maine veterans and annually provides funds to a variety of Maine based nonprofits supporting veterans’ issues. Additionally, each year club members organize and host a large scale Veterans Appreciation Luncheon to honor as many of Maine’s veterans as possible.
- Portland Rotarians work with the city of Portland to plant trees along several segments of the Bayside Trail every summer.
- Portland Rotarians are also actively volunteering with several local organizations including: the St. Vincent DePaul Thanksgiving Dinner for Homeless, the Immigrant Welcome Center Program on Entrepreneurship, the Salvation Army, the Long Creek Youth Development Center Mentoring Program, and the Preble Street Resource Center among others.
100% of the donation will be used to support these life-improving initiatives locally and internationally.