Agawam Rotary Club continues providing masks to community

Feb. 23, 2021 | Ryan Feyre
rfeyre@thewestfieldnewsgroup.com

The Agawam Rotary Club has distributed over 15,000 masks throughout town since October.
Reminder Publishing submitted photo

AGAWAM – The Agawam Rotary Club continues to assist the community with mask distribution during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The club has provided over 15,000 medical face masks throughout Agawam since the month of October, all of which were donated from the Rossi Family Foundation-and organization that supports arts, education, health, social services and the environment-as well as Rotary District 7890.

During that month of October 2020, the club received 5,000 masks and distributed them to the Department of Public Works (DPW), Agawam first responders, and any other departments throughout town that needed face coverings.

Rotary Club president John Barber received notification back in December that additional masks were available for distribution across the city. Since then, an extra 10,000 masks have been provided to assisted living facilities, the school department, Agawam Housing Authority, Agawam-West Springfield Parish Cupboard, and the Salvation Army.

“We have gotten some feedback from the staff at the assisted living facilities who are very appreciative that we thought of them,” said Barber, who also noted that 5,000 of those 10,000 masks went to the assisted living facilities in town. “It’s been extremely well-received.”

Much like in the case of other clubs and departments in town, the Rotary Club has been “upended” by the pandemic, according to Barber. The club’s goal in the near future is to get back up and running virtually.

“Our fundraising that we used to have, we’re not able to do because it was in-person,” said Barber. Without the club’s summer concert series, which normally occurs in the middle of every year, Barber and company were not able to sell advertisements inside the concerts’ programming.

The other big fundraising event that the club missed out on in 2020 was their October harvest festival. This event had to be cancelled because there was no possible way to spearhead a festival virtually.     

“The ship has been capsized, but we are slowly righting ourselves and getting our sea legs under us,” said Barber. “Rotary has always been a service organization.”

With events like festivals and concerts still up in the air when it comes to reopening, Barber said that the club will continue to find different mechanisms for raising money and providing services to the community-the masks being a major example.

Outside of virtual communication, Barber said that the club may also look into other socially-distanced avenues for community involvement, whether that be Habitat for Humanity work or Connecticut River cleanup.

In the meantime, the club will be continuing their scholarship program in 2021, where they hand out three different scholarships to different high schoolers who are taking different paths in their respective careers.

According to the club’s website, one of these scholarships goes to an Agawam and West Springfield senior who plan on attending college. The second scholarship, which can also be used as a grant for purchasing equipment, goes to an Agawam senior interested in a trade. The third scholarship goes to an Agawam graduate who is interested in cultural arts.

“The Agawam Rotary in the past has always been a highly ‘raise money, write checks’ type of club,” said Barber. “And we really can’t do that the way we used to be able to do that.”

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