What is Altrusa
Altrusa is an international service organization dedicated to improving communities worldwide. With almost 10,000 members, Altrusa has 361 clubs in ten countries. Members work on promoting literacy and identifying and solving community problems through original projects and by partnering with other organizations or agencies.
Altrusa International of Rochester, Inc. was chartered as a club in 1950, thirty-two years after Mamie L. Bass founded the first club in Indianapolis. Mamie is famous for saying women should not just be good, they should be good for something! The most well-known Altrusan was Eleanor Roosevelt.
Altrusa of Rochester in Action
Book Shower to Help the International Academy and
School 42 Libraries a Huge Success!
On April 10th we hosted a "Book Shower," inviting friends to attend a simple supper, enjoy a wonderful guest speaker (Vivian Vande Velde - a prominent Rochester children's author), and help contribute to the book needs of the International Academy and School 42 in Rochester. A list of books still needed by these schools can be found here.
Forty-five women gathered at Christ Church in downtown Rochester for this event. Vivian Vande Velde gave a lively speech about everyone telling their unique stories and the two school librarians spoke movingly about the gratitude of their students for the books they will be given. Thank you to all who participated and to Liz, Barb C, Karen, Jody, Carol, and the rest of the club for all their hard work organizing and running the event.
Altrusa Events
Rochester Children's Book Festival
Altrusa just completed its seventh year participating in the Rochester Children's Book Festival. This wonderful festival brought many of our local children book authors to one location. There were craft and reading rooms, three workshops by authors on the craft of writing every half hour and many community groups' tables to visit. We collected three boxes of books, donated to win a raffle ticket for the quilt below. At the end of the Festival, the winning ticket was drawn and the quilt was sent off to the grandmother in Hilton who wanted to win it for her grandson. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the grand effort over the past several weeks.
Festival to Go
Several of the invited authors from the RCBF also volunteer to partner with Altrusa at our city schools in the "Festival to Go". This event is held over several days to bring the writing experience to the classroom. This year we will be visiting Nathaniel Hawthorne School and Mary B. Anderson School, October 22nd to October 26th. The Altrusa Club will purchase books from these authors and donate them to each school library.
