Over the years, the Canton Rotary Club has frequently participated in national and international charitable causes, either by raising funds or by hosting international students while visiting in this country.

In recent years, our club has contributed funds to several charities outside of our own immediate area.  Among them have been:

• A Canton-to-Greenville, Alabama Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund
• Shelter Box USA
• The Sri Lanka Tsunami Relief Fund
• The San Salvador Hurricane Relief Fund
• The Wheelchair Foundation

The club regularly partners with programs from the Rotary Foundation, created to support PolioPlus, Rotary International’s celebrated program to eradicate polio everywhere on the planet, as well as other funded programs.

In particular, the Canton club has hosted students and young professionals in Rotary’s Group Study Exchanges, most recently in 2006 from Argentina and Paraguay, and in 2007 from Sweden.

Members of the Rotary Foundation Group Study Exchange from Argentina and Paraguay speak to a weekly lunch meeting of the Canton Rotary Club, 2006.

Peter Van de Water, third from left, hosts the Group Study Exchange from Argentina and Paraguay on a visit to the Adirondacks in Tupper Lake, 2006.

The Argentina-Paraguay GSE visiting the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, 2006.

Rotary International also provides opportunities for Americans to travel and study abroad.  One such program is the Ambassadorial Scholarship,  a highly competitive program that supports graduate students and young professionals to travel and study in foreign countries for extended periods of time. 

Rene-Paul Forier, Club Internatioanl Service Committee Chair [l.] and Katie Gauthier [c.], native of Canton, was the Canton Rotary Club's candidate for a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship and a finalist in District 7040 in 2007