Prospect and Goshen are contiguous communities northeast of Louisville, Kentucky. Even though both communities are essentially suburbs of Louisville however each community maintains a rural flavor even though they are located only a few miles from downtown Louisville.

The Prospect / Goshen Rotary Club works hard to be involved in all four avenues of Service, in the true spirit of Rotary International. Because of this, we have realized enormous personal satisfaction in giving back, and have formed strong bonds of friendship and caring among our members. We try hard to put elbow grease into our projects, but we also like to believe we are generous with our dollars when that is the appropriate way to serve. We are deeply concerned about our own community and the world community as well. We truly appreciate the opportunity to share our vision with the rest of the world.

Our club was founded in 1995, with 23 charter members, 14 of whom are still active. We are blessed with a core group of founders with vision, purpose and drive. Most importantly we have not let our newness as a Club slow us down.

We have very purposefully and deliberately defined our Club as one of Service. We believe very strongly that a Service organization without service is just an organization. Even more importantly, we believe in the concept of hands-on service. Historically, when faced with the choice of grabbing tools and doing the work or grabbing our wallets, we overwhelmingly reach for the tools.

Our club annually participates with a charitable agency, which does soft winterizations on the homes of elderly and economically disadvantaged persons in the Louisville area. With the members of our Interact Club, we put plastic on windows, do soft insulating on cracks and help the homeowner understand the importance of proper maintenance of heating equipment. We have had as many as seven teams participate in this effort, winterizing three to four homes per team.

Not less than four times per year our club gathers to clean up over three miles of scenic US Highway 42 in our community.

The City of Prospect presents a wonderful Fourth of July Celebration, complete with Parade and Fireworks. Our Club hosts a concession tent each year, cooking hot dogs and popcorn, and selling soft drinks. We have found, as I’m sure have most Clubs, that our reward for service is a greater fellowship among members. It often times becomes hard to distinguish where service to our community stops and a social event begins. We like having the best of both worlds.

Each year, for the four or five weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas, our Club staffs a Salvation Army Kettle outside the Prospect Kroger. We work two-person shifts, for two hours per shift. Well over one-half of our membership was able to participate, along with members of the Sacred Heart Interact Club and UofL Rotaract worked the kettle.

Twice each year our Club provides volunteers to help disadvantaged youth at a Boy Scout Adventure Camp located at the Boy Scout Camp Crooked Creek near Bernheim Forest. These youth are socially, economically or physically disadvantaged. Our volunteers help the children with fishing, marksmanship, crafts or physical exercise of some sort.

For the Christmas holidays we adopt a needy family and make sure their children have a nice Christmas and the family is well fed. Club members make donations of food, clothing, and toys.

Portland is primarily a low-income neighborhood in West Louisville. In a new project for us, we are partnering with the Methodist Youth Center there to mentor motivated youth headed for college.

Each year, we help build a house for a family selected by Habitat for Humanity. Our membership turns out to landscape, caulk, paint etc. in preparation for the new owners.

Beginning with a cheerless, windowless room in a converted farm house turned Library, club members cleared old fixtures, ripped up carpet, installed drywalls, installed new lighting, new shelves, painted, and arranged for a custom mural depicting local landmarks. Due to a lot of hard work, the space was transformed into an attractive, comfortable, inviting reading room for children. All in all, we spent over $8000 and countless hours of labor including help from our Interact Club, to achieve the final result. The room was dedicated July 1999, with the installation of a permanent plaque recognizing our club’s contribution.

Although we do a lot of hands-on service, we still need money for some of our projects.

We have a companion organization to our Club, the Rotary Foundation of Prospect / Goshen, Inc. This is a bonafide Section 501(c) (3) Charitable Foundation, through which a large portion of our philanthropic funds flow; therefore, gifts to the foundation are tax deductible. This makes giving to the Foundation more attractive to Club members and others as well.

Our largest fund-raiser, by far, is the Rotary Fall Classic Golf Scramble, which is held on the first Monday of each October at the beautiful Hunting Creek Country Club. It attracts participants and sponsors from all over Louisville, Jefferson and Oldham counties. This is an excellent example of our Foundation’s advantage as an asset in raising money, because corporate sponsorships of the Tournament are tax deductible, and therefore easier to obtain.

Another event, which is as much community service as it is fund-raising, involves staffing the ticket booth at the Oldham County Fair. Again this is a wonderful way to help raise funds for the club and enjoy an evening of fellowship with other Rotarians.

Vocational projects allow us to work with young people, guiding them to valuable and productive experiences in service.

One of our charter members, Bob Quaife and newer members, Bernie Strenecky, have been an integral part of establishing a Rotaract Club at the University of Louisville. In conjunction with this, both have traveled to Belize and acted as either a facilitator or the official photographer on the trip and continue to be the driving force in the development of the Rotaract Club.

Each week, one of our members presents a brief 5-7 minute personal sketch and description of his or her current occupation. This serves to acquaint the members, and highlights the resources and talents that each member brings to the group.

During the past, our Club’s participation in International service projects has been broad-based and extensive.

In the past, our club has sponsored a U of L student to travel to Belize in Central America for a one-week study. As a result of our support of this program, we afterward chartered a Rotaract Club at the University of Louisville.

Each year our club vies for the honor of hosting one of the teams visiting in our District. Club members have the opportunity to host one of the members in their homes during their stay and

The real gem in our International Service portfolio was our partnering with the Rotary Club of Toluca Mexico to equip a home for young boys, street children from Toluca. We raised $5000, combined it with $5000 from the Toluca club, and obtained a generous matching grant from Rotary International. Additional donations of goods and services and Rotary-style resourcefulness brought the total investment in Toluca youth to $30,000. Later, we began a parallel project – Refugio de Maria (Refuge of Mary) – directed to the care and housing of homeless girls in the same region. Like the first Toluca project, we refurbished and improved the existing building.