The Taste of Annandale is just one of many Rotary Club service projects

Volunteers hard at work at the Annandale Rotary Club’s food-packaging event.

The Annandale Rotary Club has been serving the community and providing networking opportunities for the past 53 years.

One big way the service organization is showing its community support is by signing on as a Gold-level sponsor of the Taste of Annandale. The club’s former president, Bob Kahane, is the chair of the Taste of Annandale Planning Committee.

The Rotary Club donates over $30,000 a year in college scholarships to five students at Northern Virginia Community College, four students at Annandale High School, and one Falls Church High School student.

The Rotary Club recently sponsored a meal-packaging event at Northern Virginia Community College’s (NVCC) Annandale campus, where volunteers assembled 30,000 packages, each containing six meals for lower-income families with children at local schools.

The club donates $2,000 a year to the Annandale Christian Community for Action (ACCA), with half of those funds paying for fuel costs for ACCA’s furniture delivery program for lower-income households. It hosts an annual Christmas party and provides gifts for children at the ACCA Child Development Center.

The Annandale Rotary Club presents a long-time member award to Gwen Cody, a real estate broker and former member of the Virginia House of Delegates.

For the past 40-plus years, the Annandale Rotary Club presents a framed certificate to an exemplary student at 17 local elementary schools. The school selects the honoree based on academic and service accomplishments.

One of the club’s biggest projects is raising funds for Polio Plus, a program of Rotary International that has helped reduce polio cases worldwide by 99.9 percent since its first vaccination project in 1979.

Other programs supported by the club include Go Baby Go, which customizes toy electric cars for children with mobility disabilities

The Annandale Rotary Club supports two local branches, an Interact Club for students at Annandale High School, and a Rotaract Club based at NVCC.

Anyone interested in joining or learning more about the Annandale Rotary Club is welcome to come to one of its meetings. Anyone can join; you don’t have to represent a local business or even live in Annandale.

The club gathers every Wednesday at 12:15 p.m. at the Juke Box Diner in Annandale. Meetings usually feature a presentation from an elected official or leader of a local organization or school.

When Northern Virginia Community College is in session, the Rotary club meets on the first and third Thursday in the provost’s office at the Annandale campus. Pamela Hilbert, the club’s president, is provost of NVCC’s Annandale Campus.

For more information about the Annandale Rotary Cub, contact Bob Kahane, [email protected], 703-856-8773.