Great Big Give Back Returns to Presque Isle Rotary Club

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine (WAGM) -

The Presque Isle Rotary Club’ s Great Big Give back returns this year. Newssource8′s Brian Bouchard has the story.

“Three years ago Rotary started the Great Big Give Back. The whole pandemic turned us upside down and so we had to look at things differently” says Virginia Joles – Club Service Projects Chair, Presque Isle Rotary Club.

Over the last 75 years, The Presque Isle rotary Club has held auctions via radio, television, online and even held silent auctions, but The Great Big Give Back, Presque Isle Rotary Club’s latest incarnation of their signature fundraising event will culminate on the club’s 100th birthday, celebrating a Century of service by raffling off baskets of items. In addition, they will also be holding an online auction throughout the month of April.

“This year we’re carrying back two parts of that, one is the raffle which we have 8 baskets, they’re each worth 1200 dollars a piece roughly and an Online auction, hosted by Gregg Auctions where we’ll have more high dollar items and that will be open up through April, all leading up to the finale event on April 25th” says Matthew Bouchard – Club Treasurer, Presque Isle Rotary Club.

The Rotary Club aims to give back to 3 organizations or projects from the funds raised in addition to the Rotary’s Scholarship Fund, including Presque Isle Youth Hockey, The Mapleton Fire Department, The Prestile Community Park Project in Easton.

“Something that people don’t know about the Presque Isle rotary club is that we actually support Presque Isle, but we also support Mapleton, Castle Hill, Chapman, Easton and Ashland. We have a committee of about 9 Rotarians who reviewed all the applications and ranked them from favorite to least favorite, we had about 27 applications this year and we had to narrow it down to 3″ says Jordyn Madore - Vice President, Presque Isle Rotary Club.

In addition, the Rotary also chooses to highlight members of the community who embody the Rotary Club’s motto of “Service Above Self”. In years past, 3 awards were given out under the name community service heroes. This year, they’ve added a 4th category, and rebranded them as the “Service Above Self Awards.” The categories are Student, Adult, Community Organization and Teaching the Future.

“A student needs to study, a lot of students go out and maybe get a job, but there are those students that go above and beyond and just volunteer their time and continue, both in the school and outside in the community. Adults are doing the same thing. And it doesn’t have to be this magnificent “Hey we’re going to save the city or build something” it’s that little effort that they make that maybe helps maybe even 1 individual, that’s what were trying to recognize.” says Joles.

Those recipients are still being decided, but are expected to be announced soon. Everything, including the Great Big Giveback culminates on April 25th, the Rotary’s 100th A link to more information will be made available on our website at WAGMTV.com

Brian Bouchard, NewsSource8

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