Who We Are
Rotary is where neighbors, friends, and problem-solvers share ideas, join leaders, and take action to create lasting change.
The Rotary Club of Boca Raton consists of 80+ community-minded business leaders from the greater Boca Raton area. Our members focus on making our community a better place to live, work, and play by inspiring and uplifting today’s youth to become tomorrow’s leaders by sharing our virtues and values. Some of our community service projects include: Providing college scholarships for high school seniors, fostering the performing arts in today’s youth, promoting STEM & robotics to middle and high school students, providing dictionaries for Boca Raton’s 3rd graders, assisting local foster children and educating families in need. Rotary’s motto is “Service above Self” and our club members live by that every day to “Change Lives and Build Futures.”
Our club was founded in 1957 by a group of local business professional that wanted to give back to the local community. The Rotary Club of Boca Raton is one of over 35,000 rotary clubs comprising over 1.2 million members around the world. Rotary is a non-political, non-religious organization who mission is to provide service to others, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through our fellowship of business, professional, and community leaders. Rotary’s main areas of focus are:
- Promote peace
- Fight disease
- Provide clean water, sanitation, and hygiene
- Save mothers and children
- Support education
- Grow local economies
We meet every Wednesday at 12:00PM for lunch at The Pavilion Grille in Boca Raton. Our lunches provide a chance for our members to network with other “Service above Self” minded individuals, learn from a variety of outside guest speakers, and work together on planning community service projects. Additional our club has a lot of activities outside of our weekly lunch from community service projects to casual social events. We also host three major events a year including OPAL, Future Stars, and The Pirate Invasion Run. Rotary is more than a service club, it’s a group of your 80 closest friends who are focused on making the world a better place by helping others and living life by the Four Way Test.
Signature Events
OPAL Awards
The Outstanding People And Leaders Awards recognizes citizens in Boca Raton who have demonstrated an on-going commitment to serve their neighbors and our City through Philanthropic, Professional Leadership (Business), Education, Governmental(Civic), Community Service and Medical Service Endeavors. Every January, over 350+ members from our community come together to honor the recipients and raise money for the missions and projects of The Rotary Club of Boca Raton including youth college scholarships.
This one of a kind of event has been recognized by Rotary International receiving a Significant Achievement Award of which only a select few are given out to the over 35,000 Rotary Clubs around the world. Every year the event is a sellout so we recommend purchasing your tickets early to celebrate the people that make Boca Raton one of the best places to live, work, play.
Future Stars
For over 17 years Future Stars has been one of South Florida’s most prestigious middle and high school performing arts competition. In partnership with the City of Boca Raton, the dance and vocal show is hosted live at Mizner Park Amphitheater to over 1000+ people produced by a professional light and sound crew on the same stage some of the nation’s top talent performs. Every year students from across South Florida audition to make the less than 30 finalist acts for the show that will be judged by some of the region’s top talent. Many of our past performers have moved on to the country’s top educational institutions including Juilliard, NYU Tish, and Northwestern and several have become household names in their professional career.
Auditions are open to all middle and high school performing arts students in the South Florida area to compete in our vocal and dance categories. Of the over 100 plus applications we receive every year only the top 25-30 acts make it to become a Future Stars Finalist. We are excited to see this year’s top talent!
Pirate 5K/10K
For over 20 years The Rotary Club of Boca Raton has been helping put on a community Run. Over the years Rotary has partnered with D.A.R.E., the YMCA, XXXX, and many others to promote healthy outdoor fun. This year we have a very special run planned in partnership with the Florence Fuller Child Development Center. Arrrrrrrgh you ready for it?
Grab ye matey, and your favorite parrot, and come run for goodwill and better friendships benefiting the kids of Florence Fuller at our Pirate Invasion Run. Hosted on the world famous A1A Blvd, you will be running along the beaches that centuries ago the real “Pirates of the Caribbean” set foot on. We want to see you best pirate attire and your fastest run times. It’s a friendly family event with special costume contest, live entertainment, breakfast, bounce houses, a special kids run. This professionally timed race by Runner’s Edge is just not for “yar fun luvin running matey” its a beautiful course for professional runners too. Well if be it they like to be chased by pirates! Arrrgh…
Community Projects
Latest Happenings
Charles Bender – Placing Hope in a Child’s Future
We were pleased to have Charles Bender as our speaker on Oct. 21. He is the Founding CEO of Place of Hope, Inc., a faith-based and state-licensed, family-style child welfare organization serving [...]
Valerie Dutreuil, Rotary Scholarship Recipient on Her Way to Becoming a Epidemiologist
Valerie L. Dutreuil received a Rotary Club Scholarship in 2013. She graduated Florida Atlantic University in 2017 with a B.S. She is currently pursuing her masters in Epidemiology [...]
Luke Lynch Helped Create the Royce Deale Foundation to Assist Those in Pearl City in Need
The Club was pleased to have the founders of The Royce Deale Foundation tell us about their new foundation that’s Mission is to provide to cultivate love, hope, [...]
Kerri Cassedy – From a Place of Hope to Working on International Human Rights While Going to St. Thomas University with a Special Rotary Scholarship!
Kerri Cassedy is 24 years old. She went from dealing with unstable environments and unpredictable situations to putting herself through college and supporting herself independently. Both of Kerri’s [...]
Craft Talk: Westin Fengler, Race Car Driver, Scuba Diver, Pyrotechnics Manager, Coast Guard Captain and a CPA in His Spare Time!
"The most interesting accountant in the world." The Club was pleased to have Club member Westin Fengler give a Craft Talk moderated by Jeff Tromberg. Westin was born [...]
Megan Enriquez, Rotary Youth Leadership Academy Scholarship
Gary introduced Megan Enriquez in whom we sponsored her attendance to the Rotary Youth Leadership Academy (RYLA) program. Here is Megan’s recap of her attendance and then [...]
Mathew Stone: Rotary Scholarship Student Achieves Excellence
Club member Pia Gianonne received this fabulous letter from one of our Rotary Scholarship awardees, Matthew Stone. It heartwarming to read feedback from such a fine and accomplished young man. I wanted [...]
Albert Slap: Assessing Water Risk in South Florida
The Club was pleased to receive a great talk from Albert Slap, President of Coast Risk Consulting - a geospatial technology, modeling and data analytics company located in [...]
Andrea Virgin, Creating the Exciting Boca Raton Center for the Arts & Innovation at Mizner Park
Our speaker on Sept. 2 was Andrea Virgin, President of Virgin Design. She established the company with the vision of creating a planning and engineering services company, centered [...]
Arthur Adler – Boca West Children’s Foundation – Grant to Boca Rotary for Scholarships
Neil Saffer discussed how the Rotary Club of Boca Raton had a special relationship with the Boca West Children’s Foundation for many years. Neil Introduced Arthur Adler, Chairman [...]
Dr. John Stasswimmer & Rachel Huerta, ARPN Answer Your Questions on Covid-19
We had a special meeting this week with Club members Rachel Huerta, ARPN and John Strasswimmer, MD, Ph.D. Rachel runs Direct Primary Care of Boca Raton and handles [...]
Hilary Rose Zalman; Covid-19, Real Estate and Evictions
The Club was pleased to have Hilary Zalman as our Guest Speaker this week (in spite of her being Gary Hildebrand’s niece) to discuss Commercial Leasing and Tenant [...]
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