Mitchelton Rotary Club meets at Arana Leagues Club in The Grove although for most of its history its projects have been primarily in the Mitchelton-Enoggera area.
The History of Mitchelton Rotary
Rotary Club of Mitchelton was sponsored by the Rotary Club of Chermside. It was chartered on 10th April 1967 with a membership of 24. The Charter President was Col Kirkpatrick and the Charter Secretary: John H. Campbell.
It sponsored the establishment of the Rotary club of Stafford in 1975 and the Rotary Club of Samford in 1980.
The Rotary Club of Mitchelton was responsible for building the Mitchelton Senior Citizens Centre in conjunction with the Enoggera Lions Club. This project won the District 9600 Significant Achievement Award for 1977. This project was completed in 1979. It was a huge undertaking consuming the energy of the Club for the best part of three years. The value to the community is there for all to see today. Even in their wildest dreams the originators could not have imagined how the facility would contribute to the whole life of the Mitchelton area and not just to the senior citizens.
It also established the Mitchelton and District Meal-on- Wheels service. The Club supplied and erected the roof to the new Mitchelton Youth Club’s clubhouse. It designed and constructed an adventure playground at Mitchelton Special School and erected a shelter in Fenwick Park.
For several years an annual art show was held in the Brookside shopping centre. This was started to support the building of the Senior Citizens Centre and went on to be the mainstay of Club fundraising for many years. However as with many things it proved to have a natural life and was in gradual decline when the Club decided that other avenues of fundraising would be more productive.Today raffles and sausage sizzles are the most productive means of raising funds.
Women were first admitted to membership in 1999 and the first female president of the Rotary Club of Mitchelton was installed in June 2005.
Involvement with young people is the present mainstay of Club activity. The local high schools are provided with awards for speech night in the area of citizenship education. Students are encouraged to participate in RYLA RYPEN and NYSF camps and the club has hosted several inbound and outbound overseas student exchanges.
The Club continues to give strong support to the Donations in Kind program and Computers for Kids. Each year the club conducts a Christmas lunch for a hundred or so local senior citizens.