What We Do
Supporting communities at home and around the world

In 2020 UERC undertook to assist with the renovation and maintenance of around 70 public benches in and around Kirkby Stephen. Many had deteriorated through neglect. This ongoing project is a direct contribution to the local community.

Christian Head is a local care home for people with dementia and others who need care. Club members maintain the gardens and outdoor areas, including the patio where residents can sit outside. We also refurbish garden furniture on site.

UERC runs a monthly hearing aid repair and battery replacement clinic for local people. This free service helps residents of Kirkby Stephen and the surrounding area maintain their hearing aids and remain connected with their community.

From 2023, UERC supported the Growing Well kitchen garden site at Tebay Services, which provides specialist mental health support. Club members and volunteers contributed over 306 man-hours building compost bins, an outdoor communal table, a gazebo and planters — all completed in early 2025.

Volunteers from UERC assist with the weekly production of the Talking Newspaper in Cumbria, producing audio versions of local newspapers for blind and partially sighted people. The club has supported this project for many years.

In a rural area such as Cumbria, a helicopter ambulance is sometimes the difference between life and death. UERC are proud to support the Great North Air Ambulance Service, which provides emergency medical cover to the North East, North Yorkshire and Cumbria.

Each year over 200 Christmas gifts for the over-eighties are distributed around Kirkby Stephen and the Upper Eden Valley by club members, ensuring older residents feel remembered and valued at Christmas.

We like to help out in our local community as well as overseas. The Kirkby Stephen Grammar School Business Challenge is an annual event sponsored by the Upper Eden Rotary Club, giving young people hands-on experience of enterprise and teamwork.

UERC supported a new STEM laboratory at the Kibera Girls School Soccer Academy (KGSA) in the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya. The school lacked lab facilities, preventing girls from taking science subjects and progressing to further education. By 2022 UERC had raised £4,675 for a fully refurbished and equipped science lab.

UERC supports Vision Aid Overseas, which trains eye care workers and helps provide affordable spectacles for people in developing countries who cannot access eye care, opening up education and employment opportunities.

Aquabox provides clean water and emergency supplies to communities affected by disaster. Each box can purify up to 20,000 litres of drinking water and also contains medical, hygiene and survival supplies. UERC has funded Aquaboxes for disaster relief around the world.

UERC established links with the remote village of Ankoma in Ghana's Kwahu District. Club members travelled there to deliver medical supplies and funded the construction of school toilet blocks in Ankoma and the nearby village of Abisu No.2, improving conditions for local children.

A club member set up a fortnightly club for local people with memory problems or who are simply lonely. UERC members help to run and support this group, which provides friendship and social connection for some of the most vulnerable people in our community.

Following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, UERC worked with Appleby Rotary Club to raise over £2,700 in a weekend bucket collection at Tebay Services. Club members also privately donated two generators which were shipped to Ukraine to power village halls. A further collection at Tebay Services in April 2022 raised additional funds.

ShelterBox provides emergency accommodation and survival equipment to disaster victims worldwide. Each box contains a 10-person tent and survival aids to help a family survive for at least six months. UERC has funded boxes for disasters from Algeria (2003) to Gaza (2024), contributing to over 20 years of support.

Since the early 1980s, UERC has contributed over £28,750 to Rotary's PolioPlus programme, which has achieved a 99.9% reduction in polio cases worldwide. The club raised funds by exhibiting the Rotary Iron Lung at 50+ events in 2016–2018, and members have participated directly in polio immunisation campaigns in Ghana.

In 2008, club members drove trucks loaded with over 7 tonnes of medical equipment from Kirkby Stephen to Bamako and Timbuktu in Mali — a 6,000-mile round trip through Morocco, Western Sahara and Mauritania. Wheelchairs, hospital beds and incubators were donated, and £10,600 raised from selling the vehicles funded the construction of the Eden Clinic in Dinfara.

UERC supported Rotary's Africa Hope project, which works with Hope and Homes for Children to alleviate the despair of children orphaned by conflict and AIDS in Rwanda and South Africa. With £1,000 a family can be rescued from crisis, given shelter, food, medicine and education over three years.

Roger Frank of UERC conceived the idea of manufacturing a replica Rotary Iron Lung to raise awareness of, and funds for, polio eradication. In 2016–2018 club members showed the Iron Lung at over 50 events around the country, raising thousands of pounds for PolioPlus before passing it on to Thornbury Rotary Club.