Finding fellowship through the Freeport-Merrick Rotary Club

For 77 years, the Freeport-Merrick Rotary Club has fulfilled the Rotary International motto: “Service Above Self.”

While a local chapter of the group, the services provided by the Freeport-Merrick club extend overseas. One international project that shows the club’s dedication is their support for engineering a well in a small Haitian village, Anse Pirogue.

The well-creating process began in 2018, explained club vice president Marc Rigueur. Once the well-diggers struck water, infrastructure for the pump came next. The pump is successful, “but,” Rigueur said, “because the water’s brackish, it does have to be filtered.” The club is now fund-raising for the filtration system, he said, and hopes “to set up an infrastructure so neighboring towns can also benefit from it as well.”

The club’s commitment to local projects shone when the Covid-19 pandemic struck. To keep their three-times-weekly schedule of meetings intact, the Freeport-Merrick Rotarians set up the first Zoom meetings in Rotary District 7255.

“The Zoom meetings helped us provide emotional support to each other when things were hard,” club president Florence Marc-Charles said. “We had members whose mothers and friends were very affected by Covid.”

The club’s activities forged ahead. Among other projects, it donated 4,000 face masks to the Freeport School District and 2,000 masks to Freeport Village Hall and financed 600 face shields for local hospitals and clinics. At Thanksgiving, it helped stock food pantry shelves at the Salvation Army and the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District Community Cupboard. For Christmas, it partnered with the Freeport school district to provide gift cards for 21 children living in shelters.

This past March, the club raised $2,000 by holding a pop-up campaign, selling popcorn through the fundraiser sales site Double Good.

“This is the end of the Rotary year,” Marc-Charles said, “so the funds raised will be allocated to the projects approved last July when the board submitted the [2020-2021] plan to the club.” 

“It’s a very effective organization,” said Jordan Pecora, who joined the club in late summer 2020. He enjoys both the fellowship and the club’s way of achieving projects “with our grit, our desire, and our creativity.”

Rotary International has a strong structure that supports local clubs and maintains careful accountability. “Rotary does audit and make sure that whatever we say we are going to do, we get it done, and that the money is allocated appropriately,” Marc-Charles said.

The Freeport-Merrick Rotary Club looks forward to expanding its outreach, members explained.

“We have set up our website and now have a Facebook account, so we can continue doing these things on a larger scale,” Rigueur said.

“There have been many things we have been able to accomplish as a team, as a group, as a club,” Marc-Charles said. “It gives a lot of joy. That’s all I can say.”

Club news and contact information can be found at www.freeportmerrickrotary.org.