College’s Rotaract Club Receives KGIB Award

Press Release from Keep Golden Isles Beautiful

Keep Golden Isles Beautiful is fortunate to work with a multitude of community partners towards a cleaner and greener community. This support and volunteer effort is crucial for community betterment efforts, projects and initiatives. One of those very valued and important groups is the recipient of our 2021 Community Partner of the Year/Non-Profit award, the College of Coastal Georgia Rotaract Club.

Under the wing of Rotary, Rotaract clubs offer young people ages 18 and older opportunities to develop leadership and professional skills, exchange ideas with community leaders and have fun through service. With almost 11,000 Rotaract clubs worldwide, KGIB is fortunate that one of those very clubs is housed at the College of Coastal Georgia under the purview of advisor Brian Weese. CCGA’s Rotaract club has been an active and dedicated member of KGIB’s Adopt-A-Highway program since April of 2013, where groups commit to cleaning a one-mile stretch of roadway at least four times a year. In that time, Rotaract students have spent 450 hours removing 1,968 lbs of trash from a highly visible section of roadway near their school. This gung-ho group also rolls up their sleeves at KGIB Marsh Madness cleanups, helping remove trash from the valuable salt marsh during the month of March. Benefitting from CCGA Rotaract Club students are other annual KGIB efforts such as the Plogging cleanup that combines jogging and picking up trash, the Brunswick City-wide cleanup, the annual Electronics Recycling & More event and KGIB administrative office tasks.

As with any other KGIB volunteer group, each group contact is responsible for communicating with their members and our staff, making sure volunteers know where and when events are happening, completing annual paperwork and reporting event statistics. Since 2013, our student Rotaract officer contact has changed 8 times. Whereas this usually poses a challenge for other volunteer groups, KGIB staff are routinely impressed with the organizational skills of the CCGA Rotaract Club, the leadership of its officers and the professionalism of its members. With their boundless enthusiasm, community commitment, tireless energy and can-do attitude, it is no wonder that today we honor the CCGA Rotaract club as KGIB’s 2021 Community Partners of the Year/Non-Profit.

Congratulations CCGA Rotaract Club!

Ten community volunteer and partner awards were presented for the calendar year 2021:

Community Partner of the Year/Non-Profit: College of Coastal Georgia Rotaract Club

Community Partner of the Year/Profit: Georgia Sea Grill

Outstanding Public Service/City Government: Deborah McCauley-Craig

Outstanding Public Service/County Government: Timothy Bane

Outstanding Elected Official: Mayor Cornell Harvey

Environmental Steward of the Year: Jennifer & Mike Hatcher

Horizon Award: Logan Hildreth

Shining Star Award: Monica del Cid

Hindery Adopt-A-Highway Volunteer of the Year Award: Gail Chandler

Bootsie Mason Award of Excellence: Clement Cullens

Each recipient received a custom-made award hand crafted from scrap wood and bicycle parts created by Terry Trowbridge.