Keeping People Warm

Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: March 2025

Even though Winter is shuffling off into another hemisphere this month, it still can still stir-up a chilly wind before Spring sends it scurrying south.

Mountaintop Rotary stands ready with its Keep-people-warm projects. They see to it that coats (and firewood) are available until no longer needed.

Rotary hopes you remember throughout the warmer seasons that Chilly Weather will be whistling back in November. If you run across coats, hats, and mittens for kids or grown-ups in your summer travels, snap them up, if you have the charitable means, and bring them back to the mountains for next season’s drive.

Be inspired by 2024’s Coat Drive. It was a supremely warm success. The following numbers reveal what Mountaintop Rotary and our area community accomplished. In December, 2000+ coats were donated and distributed.

“Our winter projects have become an integral part of this generous community. Rotarians work along-side local churches and businesses all working together to keep our community warm,” Michael Vavrek, Chair of Service Projects, Mountaintop.

Most projects given by Mountaintop Rotary are fund-raisers and grants, but there are two physical projects that members throw their muscle and heart into every year.

One is their Coat Drive.

The other is Cut Firewood. 2024’s hurricane provided a plethora of fallen trees. Many a home was heated thanks to Mother Nature and the Rotarians.

As this article is being written, they are out there chopping, cutting, splitting and stacking right now. (Wood’n you? Please join them at a later trees-topping session.) The cut firewood goes to the Emergency Council that makes sure it warms many a family.

If you want to know more about Mountaintop Rotary and their community support, send an email to MTRhighlands@gmail.com.