Supporting the Environment

The Rotary Club of Philadelphia supports the environment through grants awarded to local charitable organizations and through direct service projects.

Our Foundation awards more than $30,000 annually. Recent grants have been awarded to provide funding for:

• Wyck Historic House, Garden and Farm, a National Historic Landmark in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, preserves and interprets one of America’s most authentic historic sites, engaging learners of all ages. They strengthen the neighboring community through programs that focus on history, horticulture, and urban agriculture, using the past as inspiration for the present.

• Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (PHS) uses horticulture to increase four building blocks of health and well-being: access to fresh food, healthy living environments, deep social connections, and economic opportunities. They are a diverse community of people and organizations who believe in the power of horticulture to make positive social and environmental change.

• Permaculture Institute for the Communal Study of of Economic Systems (PISCES), a sustainable teaching farm in Togo, West Africa to provide fencing and supplies needed to reforest land.

• Community Capital Advisors, Inc. to purchase seeds, tools, and food items for support for the Liberia Institute for Girls-Todee, Farm to Plate farmers market.

Our club is involved with many hands-on community service projects directed at improving the environment. For example, our members…

…participated in preparing Federation Early Learning Services’ campus for the new school year, with general yard work like weeding, yard clean-up, window cleaning, external building beautification, power-washing, playground equipment assembly, indoor painting projects. 

…replanted boxwood parterres in Wyck House, Garden and Farm as part of their rose garden restoration project. The historic rose garden is the oldest in the U.S., having been continuously preserved since 1824. Members regularly volunteer for spring and fall landscape and yard maintenance, weeding, renewing turf, repotting rose seedlings, tidying wood lots, laying mushroom compost, and general yard work.

…spent a day working in Morris Park’s Indian Creek, located in Overbrook, clearing an area blocked by fallen trees, removing brush up to elevated banks, and collecting trash.

…worked with the Schuylkill River Development Corporation, meeting at the Schuylkill Banks trail under the Walnut Street Bridge to weed, mulch trees, and tidy up the river bank and trail for the season ahead.

…supported ‘Love Your Park’ volunteer cleanup events in Fairmount Park, aimed at keeping Philly's parks and waterways free of litter. Members also volunteered for the citywide Fall Service Day, to help clean up the park after a busy summer and prepare for winter: plant and care for trees, rake leaves, plant flower bulbs, clean out garden beds, and more.

…helped preserve the trees of Tacony Creek Park in a restoration project to remove invasive shrubs and vines from its forests, and preserve the forests of the Wissahickon Park, in their restoration project to remove invasive vines and shrubs surrounding Andorra Meadows.