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
Altrusa in the News
The Altrusa of Rochester club was recently featured in an article written by Lisa Tiffin. This article was in the Saturday, June 5th Democrat and Chronicle ROCNews section. Please take a few minutes to read the article.
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
In the Fall of 2012, Altrusa 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, that were 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.
The 17th Annual Rochester Children's Book Festival will be November 16, 2013, in the Flynn Campus Center of Monroe Community College. If you have not attended this wonderful event please plan to do so this coming Fall. Please stop to visit our Altrusa of Rochester table and learn of our many community events.
Festival to Go
Several of the invited authors from the RCBF also volunteered to partner with Altrusa at our city schools in the "Festival to Go". This event was held over several days to bring the writing experience to the classroom. The event, in the Fall of 2012, included visiting the Nathaniel Hawthorne School and Mary B. Anderson School, during the week of October 22nd. The Altrusa Club purchased books from these authors and donated them to each school library.
