Vermillion Rotary Club and the Community

The Vermillion Rotary Club meets every Wednesday at noon inside the Al Neuharth Media Center. The Vermillion chapter is one of almost 5,000 clubs that are a part of Rotary International. 

“We meet weekly to have informational sessions with different things that impact the community,” Rotarian and club president Nick Oyen said. “What we do is we collect money from our fellow Rotarians (and) from Rotary International grants, and we turn that around into community projects.” 

The Vermillion Rotary Club provides many services to the community and USD. Their support ranges from small projects, like helping second graders to receive bike helmets and kindergarteners to receive free books, to big projects, like donating to Vermillion High School’s robotics team. The club even donated $13,000 to USD’s Patriots Plaza. 

“We do a lot of bringing in speakers from the university about what’s going on at the university and what’s going on in the city,” Rotarian and club director Chuck Lubbers said. “People can come in here and they can help spread the message to our members.” 

During the last Rotary Club meeting, guest speaker Denton Stephens addressed the Rotarian Members. Stephens is a processions agriculture consultant and spoke about new technology in farming.

“A big thing is efficiency, that’s going to help farmers, especially farmers in today’s world,” Stephens said. “You’ve got your corporate farmers and your individual farmers, and for those individual farmers to stay competitive with the big corporate farmers, they are going to have to be more productive.”

The Rotary Club works to get speakers in various occupations. On Oct. 20, city council member Rich Holland will be Vermillion Rotary Club’s next guest speaker.

The Vermillion Rotary Club has been together doing projects for the Vermillion community for more than 16 years, Oyen said.

“Thanks to the Neuharth Center for letting us be here for a few years now,” Oyen said. “We appreciate the universities, allowing us to use their space.” 

The Rotary Club’s slogan is “serve to change lives.” As an organization, they work hard to follow their slogan, Oyen said.