Our local community projects address visible and preventable issues in communities in and around the greater Melbourne area, including ending homelessness, keeping famlies safe and making a contribution to health and the needs of the elderly in our community.
Nationally, we strive for large, impactful projects addressing areas of greatest need in the Australian community, particularly Aboriginal people, refugees, and those experiencing socio economic disadvantage.
Honouring the legacy of dedicated Rotarian Cynthia Edgell, this Empowerment Opportunity Gift offers $1,000 - $5,000 to support disadvantaged women and girls. Reflecting Cynthia’s lifelong commitment to service and leadership, Rotary Melbourne partners with community agencies to help recipients access education, employment, and financial independence for lasting personal transformation.
We have a new volunteering opportunity on Thursday 9th July from 8:15am to 1:30pm at the Magpie Nest café, Ground Floor, 69 Bourke Street, Melbourne (entrance via Westwood Place) helping to prepare and serve breakfast to homeless people in the city.
Some months ago Faye Waterman interviewed Susie Cole, RIMERN, in her studio and Nicola Tuhoro (both a Sacred Heart Mission Case Worker and until fairly recently a RIMERN saturday volunteer) at the warehouse, To view Susie's interview 'Beyond The Basics Rebuilding Lives With Care' click on the link below (24 mins).
https://ctvplus.org.au/episode/beyond-the-basics-rebuilding-lives-with-care-susie-cole/
Thank you to our valued partner, Rotary Melbourne, for their generous donation of $20,000 to enable us to evaluate our Model of Care across one or more Lighthouse programs.
Evaluations like these are crucial as they enable us to show the positive impact of our work, and also make improvements to strengthen our programs further. 
Rotary Melbourne is proud to continue our long term support of Lighthouse Foundation.
Rotary Melbourne has been supporting the five Black Rhinos basketball teams in various ways over the past four years. They were founded in 2007 by Afri-Aus Care and have been coached by Ryan Rooney.
Peter Berg introduced Dr Ruwangi Fernando the Founder & Director of STEM Sisters a highly acclaimed Not-for Profit community whom Rotary Melbourne through the Welfare of the Young Committee is partnering with on an educational printed comic book project called The Future Me. This is an edited version of Ruwangi’s and Peter’s remarks.
See all our Rotary Melbourne volunteers in action at the 2025 Melbourne Marathon in this photo gallery. Many thanks to photographer Michael Waller for the images.
Over 100 corporate volunteers joined Lighthouse Foundation’s Care Packing Day, assembling essential packs for vulnerable babies, children and young people on RUOK Day. Rotary Melbourne proudly supported the event, with Philip Endersbee donating a generous supply of new socks and beanies and partners including the Sofitel Melbourne adding toiletries.
Rotary Melbourne is backing RIMERN’s Spring Cleaning with RIMERN campaign to raise $5,000 by 30 Nov 2025.
RIMERN provides essential furniture and household goods to families starting over after crisis. Some items - like basic cleaning kits - must be purchased new to meet our quality standards.
A $50 gift sponsors a complete kit, but every dollar helps us deliver 10+ kits each week. Click read more below to change lives, one household at a time.
RIMERN (Rotary Inner Melbourne Emergency Relief Network) is a multi club Rotary project operating Inner Melbourne, providing furniture, appliances & homewares to welfare agency clients who have experienced homelessness, domestic violence, incarceration, refugee displacement and other crises.
Volunteer Rotarian and friends take calls from donors, collect, clean and sort items into household lots.
Our Rotary Melbourne Make House a Home project (MAHAH) has assisted hundreds of homeless people since it commenced in 2017, with our volunteers purchasing, packing and delivering sets of homewares helping Launch Housing as they find new homes for the homeless. You can watch our video to see how it all works.
Rotary Melbourne works in conjunction with AfriAus Care to help the Black Rhinos team, helping young migrants from African backgrounds to integrate, engage and develop relationships, preventing crime through participation in sport. Watch this video to learn more.
Following natural and other diasters, research has demonstrated an upsurge in domestic and family violence. Rotary Melbourne has partnered with Gender & Disaster Australia (GADAus) to provide training in disaster prone areas and to help foster safer, more resilient communities.
Our interactive water trailer of the Rotary Club of Melbourne as part of Rotary’s EndTrachoma by 2020 project. We partnered with Monash University, GHD and Telstra to deliver this Rotary Melbourne Centenary project, one of many different ways Clubs are working together to solve the problem of trachoma in indigenous Australia.
The End Hepatitis Now project was launched in late 2019. A Rotary Melbourne partnership has been formed with Hepatitis Victoria.
Welcome to our Rotary Melbourne 100 Year Initiative - Rotary SAFE Families. Become part of the solution in the prevention of family and elder abuse and locate support for anyone abused or in danger of abuse.
You can become an Ambassador for SAFE Families - Stopping Abuse in Families Everywhere.
For over 10 years, Rotary Melbourne have assisted collecting food from stallholders at markets across Melbourne, more recently at Prahran Market. The food, which would otherwise go to waste, is collected for Second Bite and then turned it nutritious meals for those in need, including those experiencing homelessness across Melbourne.
Our annual AFL Footy Tipping competition raises funds for our Health & Ageing projects.
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Led by the Rotary Club of Melbourne, the EndTrachoma by 2020 project unites Rotary clubs across Australia, to work towards eliminating trachoma by preventing the spread of infection that causes this avoidable blindness.
To celebrate our historic 5000th Club Meeting on 30th August 2023, Rotary Melbourne launched its 5000 Acts of Kindness project.
At the heart of Rotary is the ideal of service and doing good for one another. We are people of action, and we know that each little act makes a difference. Join us in making that difference, by performing your own Act of Kindness, and encouraging others to do the same.
We are proud of the impact we are making with Afri-Aus Care Inc to provide youth mentoring to help their migrant community. Founder Selba Gondoza Luka and Simbarashe Chigwedere share their stories.
The Rotary SAFE Families Inclusive Communities Initiative is focused on providing prevention of abuse information via printed translated Guides and films, to our many CALD (culturally diverse Australian communities). It now includes materials for Melbourne's Greek community.
Rotary Melbourne has signed a MOU with Launch Housing to support Launch Housing's mission to house the homeless.
