Welcome to the Rotary Club of Swaffham

We are just one of 35,000 Rotary clubs and just some of 2 million people worldwide who share the same core values, namely the wish to strengthen our own community and contribute to local, regional, national and international ventures using the guiderail of ‘Service Above Self’.

Founded in Chicago in 1905 so that professionals with diverse backgrounds could exchange ideas and form meaningful, lifelong friendships over time, Rotary’s reach and vision gradually extended to humanitarian service. Members in the past 120 years have a long track record of addressing challenges in their communities and around the world. Some famous examples:

• King Charles III, Princess Anne & Prince William; Franklin D Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy & Gerald Ford; Pope Francis; Margaret Thatcher; Winston Churchill
• Neil Armstrong, Roald Amundsen, Sir Edmund Hillary, Charles Lindbergh, Orville Wright; Marconi, Edison, Sibelius, Pavarotti, Bill Gates; Walt Disney; even Colonel Sanders (KFC).
• Locally, Captain Sir Tom Moore was a member of March Rotary in Cambridgeshire.

Here in Swaffham, we embrace the strong, enduring and interlinked success of the Rotary organisation with enthusiasm. We have a couple of evening meals together each month, many with interesting after-dinner speakers, that give us the chance to catch up or entertain guests or to discuss ideas and outcomes and the next planned event. We focus on several fundraising events each year affording us the headroom to support our chosen charities, whether locally or more widely.

One of our major successes of 2024 was raising £25,000 to support Scott Stones and his trips to deliver humanitarian aid to Odessa, Kherson and other devastated locations in Ukraine.

Swaffham Rotary Club fundraising paid for a lorry to deliver humanitarian aid in Ukraine. In July 2024 the new MP, Terry Jermy, helped the presentation from Charles Howard-Vyse to Scott Stones (centre)

We also gave £5,000 to YANA the rural mental health service, as well as supporting Young Carers in Watton, the Swaffham Rangers, and the RSPCA animal sanctuary in East Winch. To generate these incomes we laid on a very successful Golf Day in July, the traditional Art Exhibition in the Assembly Rooms in October with a Valuation Day before that, a wine-tasting evening in Oxborough, and some collections in Swaffham Marketplace.

In all we do in and around Swaffham and this part of Norfolk, we are mindful of and grateful for the support of the local shops and businesses that keep our civic community afloat. We welcome new members and, given Rotary grew out of a collection of like-minded, mutually supportive businessmen, we will be delighted to hear from anyone who wishes to find out more about what we do. Please speak to any of our members or contact me via the link below. We would love to hear from you.

Charles Howard-Vyse
President