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Rotary Club of Billerica

The Rotary Club of Billerica, usually called the Billerica Rotary Club in the town reports, is the town's club of Rotary International, the worldwide service organization of business and professional people that began in Chicago in 1905. The club was founded in 1967. It meets on the first and third Wednesdays of each month at 8:15 in the morning at the Rockland Trust office at 223 Boston Road in North Billerica, which is also its mailing address.

The club's work in its first years appears in the town reports' accounts of services for older residents. The report for 1974 records that "through the Billerica Rotary Club, Medic Alert Bracelets were supplied" to the elderly, and in 1975 the Billerica Bicentennial Commission, "with the generosity of the Billerica Rotary Club," presented the town with the first Billerica Town Flag. The chorus and vocal ensemble of Billerica Memorial High School sang at the club's Christmas party at the Andover Country Club in 1978, and about 1980 the ensemble was still being asked to perform for community groups "such as the Rotary Club."

Much of the club's giving has gone to young people. From at least 1987 the yearbook lists a Billerica Rotary Scholarship among the awards to graduating seniors, from 1988 given "in memory of Michael Olivieri," and it was still presented in 2019 as the Billerica Rotary Club, Michael Olivieri Scholarship. In the late 1990s the Rotarians and the Billerica Lodge of Elks each chose high school "Teens of the Month." From 1999 to 2003 the Rotary Club and the Billerica Plan, working with the Billerica Partners for Education, provided "Shadow" days of career exploration for high school juniors and seniors. In June 2022 the club gave the Olivieri scholarship to three Billerica students, one from Shawsheen Valley Technical High School, one from Billerica Memorial High School and one from a school outside the town, and that year it also sponsored Billerica sophomores for the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA).

In 1996, in the first months of the campaign to raise money from businesses and organizations for the new Billerica Public Library, the Rotary Club and the Lions Club each pledged $5,000. Robert J. Calabrese, superintendent of schools from 1984 to 2006, was a member. In 2011 students of the construction programs at Shawsheen Valley Technical High School built signs for the club. Rotary volunteers helped the Council on Aging deliver holiday gifts to homebound seniors in 2014, and the council named the club among its new supporters in 2020 and among the community partners that helped it in 2022.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020 the club met online and carried on very few service projects. Its accounts of its work from 2021 to 2023 describe an annual car wash, which in 2021 raised money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation and in 2022 for The Rotary Foundation and aid to Ukraine; a dueling piano fundraiser in October 2022 for the Billerica Rotary Foundation; a holiday dinner for seniors with the Council on Aging during the Billerica Holiday Festival in December 2022, timed so the guests could watch the tree lighting from indoors; and valentines and gift bags for residents of senior living homes. Since 2019 it has kept a "Rotary Room" at the Lowell office of the Department of Children and Families, stocked with new things for children entering foster care, and it holds a coat drive, back-to-school and holiday events and a Trunk or Treat for foster children, together with Rotarians of the other towns that office serves. It has also adopted a traffic island on Concord Road, which members cleaned with the help of the town's Department of Public Works in October 2021 and May 2022, and volunteered at the Billerica Community Pantry.

Rotary Club of Billerica

Rotary Club of Billerica

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