A Message from the Club President

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This year’s international theme for Rotary is “Reach Within to Embrace Humanity,” and is built around the three cornerstones of Family, Continuity, and Change.  The Elizabethtown Rotary Club is excited about meeting the challenges put forth to us by these themes. 

Family is the cornerstone of any community.  In Elizabethtown, our club focuses our local support on the Second Harvest Backpack Program, an after school program providing nutritious meals to over 700 Hardin County children and Rotary Smiles, a program that provides dental screening for over 1,300 third grade students in Hardin County.  Over $50,000 of in-kind services were donated to provide dental care for those in need.  Additionally we have been instrumental in the establishment of a sustainable international mission the Living Waters Guatemala Project, which has installed water purification systems in nine Guatemalan villages and brings clean water to over 14,000 inhabitants.  Through the efforts of Rotarians in Elizabethtown and the surrounding areas, these families are supported and will become the basis of their communities for years to come.

Continuity is one thing that our club can look to with pride.  Over the years, our Rotary Club has been blessed with some of the greatest leaders in our area.  A list of past presidents of the Elizabethtown Rotary Club will reveal a multitude of names that today can be found on local libraries, schools, roads, and parks.  Personally, I am humbled to be included in the roll call of these pillars of our community’s past.  Current members of the club hold leadership positions in city and county governments as well as providing direction to numerous philanthropic boards.  Our club is structured to build on our foundations of the past and carry that legacy into the future.

Change can be a frightening experience, or it can be embraced.  Our club has always looked to the future and has chosen to embrace change and use it for positives.  Whether it was the decision to integrate the club in the 1960’s or to be one of the first Rotary Clubs to accept women into membership, our club has taken advantage of change as an opportunity to strengthen our club and thereby be a stronger force for good in our community.  Rotary International has issued a challenge to their clubs to better reflect the diversity of their community and here in Elizabethtown we will accept that challenge and meet it.  Locally we will meet the challenge of a changing role in the community with recent events such as the merger of the local chambers of commerce and the completion of the BRAC initiative, we have accepted the challenge of increasing our relevance in today’s Hardin County.

This is just a glimpse of the excitement surrounding the Elizabethtown Rotary Club.  As a visitor to our website; I encourage you to look over our history page to see many of the events our club has been a part of, check out our upcoming events to see what we have going on in the near future, and listen to sound clips from recent speakers at the club.