Our work
Making a difference here and abroad
The Rotary Club of Hawthorn works across five Avenues of Service — Community, International, Vocational, Youth, and Club Service. Here's what that looks like in practice.
Our three headline projects
Local community
Supporting families in crisis
Hawthorn Rotary is the host club for Rotary SAFE Families — a program that promotes peace in the home by raising awareness of family violence and connecting families with practical support before crisis takes hold. Backed by a consortium of Rotary clubs, it has earned international recognition within Rotary International.
Health & wellbeing
Mental health support that reaches further
As the lead club of a multi-club consortium, we provide care packs for mental health inpatients at the Alfred, Box Hill, St Vincent's, and Royal Melbourne hospitals. At Upton House in Box Hill we also supply recreational equipment, art materials, and reading glasses — the kind of support that clinical pathways alone can't provide.
International
Clean water changes everything
In partnership with the Rotary Clubs of Lakes Entrance and others, we are funding SkyHydrant water purification plants for communities in the Fatuberlio sub-district of Timor-Leste. Safe drinking water is the foundation of health, education, and economic opportunity — and we're bringing that change one community at a time.
More of what we do
Community service
Beyond our headline projects, our Community Service committee runs a range of programs addressing local need. Each year, members donate non-perishable food to the Camcare Emergency Food program and assist the Boroondara Community Outreach as needs arise.
We support the Salvo Hawks football series — an initiative of Reclink and the Salvation Army that uses sport to help people recovering from addiction and disability. Members provide a pizza lunch, operate the scoreboard, and act as goal umpires at home games.
We also contribute to the Boroondara CHANCES Education Program (supporting disadvantaged students through Years 11 and 12), Hope in a Suitcase (children in out-of-home care), and DV Phones (refurbished mobile phones for domestic violence victims and hospital psychiatric patients).
International service
Our international work extends well beyond Timor-Leste. In Cambodia, former director Peter Lugg — an orthopaedic surgeon — has worked with the Kampong Speu Hospital for many years. In 2025, in collaboration with several Rotary clubs, we helped install sanitation facilities including 66 household washroom toilets in the village of Peam near Siem Reap.
We have supported the Lille Fro children's education project in the Ladakh region of India since 2009, and recently contributed to the completion of Little Seeds House — a boarding facility that spares children a long and dangerous daily journey to school.
Locally collected basketballs have gone to East African community groups in Melbourne's western suburbs to support women's basketball and youth engagement. Sporting equipment has also been shipped to schools in Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea.
Vocational & youth service
We collaborate with Auburn High School to provide resources that would otherwise be out of reach — scholarships for financially disadvantaged students, funding for the National Youth Science Forum and Santos Science Experience, and participation in Rotary's Model United Nations Assembly debating program.
In 2024 we established the Rotary Hawthorn Peter Doherty Prize for Infection and Immunity Travel — a $5,000 annual prize awarded over five years to a high-achieving University of Melbourne PhD student at the Peter Doherty Institute. The prize enables recipients to advance their research by attending a local or international conference.
Our Enterprise Forums bring innovators to speak to members and guests on topics at the frontier of their fields. Recent speakers have included the CEO of the Bionics Institute on non-invasive treatments for chronic disease.
How we fund our work
Our flagship fundraiser is the Lift the Lid lunch, held every two years to raise awareness of mental illness and funds for our service projects — the most recent event in October 2024 raised $25,000. We also run an annual Christmas produce fundraiser (hams, cakes, and puddings), Bunnings BBQs, and benefit from the Rotary Club of Hawthorn Survey Street Trust Fund for eligible community projects.
Club members are active donors to the Rotary Foundation, with per-member contributions significantly above the district average. We field a team in the annual Rotary Walk to End Polio each October.
Want to get involved?
Whether you want to volunteer, partner on a project, or simply find out more — we'd like to hear from you.