The Rotary Club of Prairie du Chien is active in community service projects on the local and international level.
> Scholarships
> Prairie du Chien Beautification Project
> St. Feriole Island Flower Gardens
> Mississippi River Adventure Days
> Safety and Security- DNA & Fingerprinting Project
The Rotary Club of Prairie du Chien provides scholarships to graduating high school seniors from the high schools in our local area.
• Prairie du Chien Beautification Project
The Rotary Club of Prairie du Chien has, since approximately 1988, assisted in beautifying our community by planting and maintaining flower pots (85 currently) along a one mile stretch of Highway 18-35/Marquette Road, the main highway through Prairie du Chien. Our club maintains these flower pots from early May through mid-October. Club members volunteer, in teams of two, to water the pots for scheduled weeks. Seventy percent of our club members participate in this project, which consists of spring planting, watering throughout the summer, and fall clean-up.
• St. Feriole Island Flower Gardens
The Rotary Club of Prairie du Chien is beginning to work with a local group on the development of a Rotary flower bed as part of the St. Feriole Island Flower Gardens. Each fall, Rotarians transplant perennial plants from the Marquette Road flower pots to the St. Feriole Island gardens. This Rotary project is in its infancy, and will be developed under the guidance of master gardeners who are responsible for the development of the St. Feriole Island Flower Gardens.
• Mississippi River Adventure Days
Click here for the brochure and registration information for the 2011 Mississippi River Adventure Day on August 1st.
Six stations were organized at Lawler Park in Prairie du Chien for children, ages 5 to 13. These stations allowed the kids and their parents or chaperones to pollywog for mussels, seine for fish, learn about river plants and animals and capture invertebrates and identify aquatic plants. In addition, the Prairie du Chien Rod and Gun Club hosted a fishing demonstration, teaching about fishing poles, lines, lures and casting.
A popular learning station allowed the kids to catch aquatic invertebrates from the river’s edge, in nets. Naturalists from Clayton County Conservation, Osborne Nature Center and Upper Mississippi River Refuge helped the kids identify their findings.
Boat transportation for on-river exploration was provided by the Iowa DNR, Crawford County Conservation and Robert Vavra of Maiden Voyage River Tours. Other supporters for this event included Mississippi Valley Conservancy, UW Platteville, Cabela’s and Wal-Mart.
This great cooperative effort to provide hands-on river exploration to the youth of the Pool 10 area was a great success. Mississippi River Adventure Day was sponsored by the Rotary Club of Prairie du Chien, the Friends of Pool 10, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and many other contributing resource agencies.
> Orphan Train Project - Peru, South America
> PolioPlus Campaign to Eradicate Polio
> Shelter Box Sponsorship
> Foreign Exchange Students
• Orphan Train Project - Peru, South America
The Rotary Club of Prairie du Chien has been working with the Orphan Train project for the past two years. We are a conductor for the Pillco Mozo orphanage in Huanaco, Peru. We had met the director of the orphanage, Sr. Mary Ann Leininger a number of years ago when she visited Prairie du Chien, and have developed a good relationship. The club's first project was to supply Sr. Leininger with funds for a printer/copier/scanner that was needed at the orphanage. Currently, Sr. Leininger is developing an art enrichment program for the children with funds from our group. An art teacher will be coming on Saturday mornings October – December and providing art lessons for the children. Our funding covers supplies as well as a stipend for the teacher. We are hoping that as the children share their work, we’ll be able to continue to expand the Prairie du Chien/Pillco Mozo relationship.
The Rotary Club of Prairie du Chien also plans to become a conductor with the orphanage at Tingo Maria, Peru. The needs of this program are much more basic, and we feel that we can help to make a difference in the lives of the children at this orphanage, which is located at the edge of the jungle. We’ll be supplying each of their six group homes with a MP3 player for activities during the rainy season when they can’t be outside.
• PolioPlus Campaign to Eradicate Polio
The Rotary Club of Prairie du Chien has been active in supporting the Rotary International PolioPlus campaign. Individual club members donate money to assist Rotary International in its efforts to eradicate polio from the earth.