Our Popular Events
We organise sizeable fund-raising events throughout the year.
Our most are established favourites include:
- Charity Golf Day 2025 at Sene Valley Golf Club, Hythe raised £8,500 for Pilgrims Hospices and other local charities
- Channel Cycle Challenge 2025 on Romney Marsh raised £5,300 for Channel’s Hardship Fund
- Wine and Wisdom Quiz 2025 raised £1,600 for those suffering hardship in the area
- Sleep Out with Porchlight raised £8,000 for the Rainbow Centre
- Folkestone Channel Triathlon 2023 raised £6,000 for local charities
- Million Miles raised £12,000 for The Sports Trust, South Kent Mind and The Rainbow Centre and other local charities
We help to organise the Saltwood Village Boxing Day Run, the largest event of its type in the UK on that day.
We’ve raised over £155,000 in the past 5 years and approaching £1million since we started in 1980.
ShelterBox Partner Certificate
We Support Many Local Charities And Good Causes
We’ve donated the most in our local area of South East Kent where we support some 30 – 40 causes a year, large and small where our support is equally valuable- some are listed here
South Kent Mind
Beacon School
Churches Winter Shelter
Boy Scouts and Girl Guides
East Kent Motor Neurone Disease Association
Folkestone Headway
Gurkha Memorial Fund
Kent & Sussex Air Ambulance
Local Schools
Shepway Food Bank
Triathlon Kayakers
Strange Cargoes
Folkestone rowing Club
Demelza Children’s Hospice
Shepway Youth Trust
Folkestone Rainbow Centre
Folkestone Age UK
Hypo Hounds
Kent Association For The Blind
Pilgrims Hospice
Shepway Young Carers
Touchbase
Porchlight
The allotment scheme at Harbour Church
We help some national charities like Alzheimers UK, Prostate Cancer UK, Cancer Research and Meningitis Now.
Youth Organisatons and Young Carers
There are important areas where we combine our resources with those of the Folkestone, Hythe and
Romney Marsh Rotary Clubs to create a bigger impact. Assisting Local Youth organisations, Young Carers and individuals is a good example.
Youth Competitions
We Organise Rotary Competitions For Local School Pupils
Every year UK Rotary holds national competitions for Young Chef, Young Photographer, Young Writer and Young Speaker. We organise the Young Photographer locally and our winners have won the national photography competition and other prizes.
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Varsha Rao from Folkestone School for Girls who won the Intermediate (11- 13yrs)
Eli Oestmann from Sandgate Primary who won the Junior Section (7-10 yrs)
Our first major venture was in 1981 when we raised £4,500 for the Italian Earthquake Disaster and drove there with 3 caravans of relief clothing and supplies collected by public appeal in Folkestone.
Life Education
Our biggest venture was to spearhead the raising of £100,000 to provide, in 2005, a dedicated Life Education mobile classroom for the 11,000 pupils in the 50 primary schools in Shepway and East Kent. In so doing we celebrated Rotary International’s 100th Anniversary and Channel Rotary’s 25th Anniversary by investing in the future quality of life of our children. The project was later adopted by all the local Rotary Clubs (Channel, Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh) as their joint project in celebration of Rotary’s 100th birthday.
Humanitarian and Disaster Relief
Rotary International and individual Rotary Clubs have an enviable reputation for providing humanitarian and disaster relief and generally improving the quality of life in less developed countries. Channel Rotary has been active in supporting charities such as Shelter Box, Shelo Foundation, Water Aid, MAF, the Gurkha Welfare Fund and providing services in India.
End Polio Now
Rotary International’s biggest ever international project has been ‘End Polio Now’. When it started 30 years ago nearly 500,000 children’s lives in 125 countries died or had their lives blighted by polio every year. With the help of Rotary Clubs worldwide, today there is only a handful of cases in one or two countries – a staggering achievement in which Channel Rotary has played its part.
To achieve polio eradication, over 500 million children have been vaccinated world-wide. This has included stopping, wars to vaccinate children and vaccinating 5 million children in 3 days in Sudan as a precaution after a report that polio had been detected in nearby Chad. Two intrepid Club members recently joined other UK Rotary teams to drive around the UK to raise awareness of the End Polio Now Campaign and helped to raise over £100,000. All vehicles carried the ‘Purple For Polio’ slogan to recognise the purple dye put on every child’s finger when they’ve been vaccinated. It is reflected in the purple crocus bulbs that UK Rotary Clubs donate to primary schools to tell pupils about this programme which is protecting the lives of children, like them, world-wide.
We Have Invaluable Help From Our Sponsors and Supporters
Our sponsors and supporters give us immense help in our work in the community.
They help us to contain the costs of fund raising events and provide specialist help and assistance.
We appreciate it very much.