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Drown Zero
Drown Zero International is a non-profit organization, made possible by The Rotary Club of Cocoa Beach, that provides life-saving rescue stations along the beaches of Brevard County.
Drown Zero’s mission is to prevent drownings worldwide through education, awareness, and rescue equipment implementation. Collectively, there are 42 flotation stations along the public beaches in Cocoa Beach. Each station has installed an orange life-saving ring to provide assistance to distressed swimmers in the event the beach is unguarded or a lifeguard is off-duty.
More information can be found here: Drown Zero International
Josh The Baby Otter
Josh the Baby Otter is a water safety training for young children. With the help of our Interact club, we bring Josh to life in the classroom and buy booklets for each kindergarten child in our local schools.
Our joint goal is to educate children with a fun and simple message: stay away from water unless accompanied by an adult. Rotarians have helped spread this life-saving message by distributing and reading the Josh the Otter book in their local communities, producing events featuring the Josh mascot, and distributing educational materials all over the world.
More information can be found here: Josh The Baby Otter
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Public Parks & Beach Adoption
The Club regularly participates in beach clean-ups with Keep Brevard Beautiful and has adopted two city parks: Cameron Barkley Rotary Memorial Park and Cocoa Isles Park. We help the city with periodic required maintenance such as mulching playground areas.
We encourage local families and tourists alike to enjoy the beauty of our town but to always leave it cleaner than you found it.
More information can be found here: Keep Brevard Beautiful
Interact & Rotary Youth Leadership
We believe that youth are our future and so we look to support them directly in many different ways.
Interact Club at Cocoa Beach Jr/Sr High School brings students together to develop leadership skills while discovering the power of Service Above Self. One example is their sponsorship of Who We Play For, which provides heart health screening of high school athletes.
Our club also sends four students annually to the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) Conference to take part in an intensive leadership development experience.
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Italian Youth Exchange
The club supports a bilateral youth exchange project with the Rotary Club of Sansepolcro, Italy, hosting four Italian exchange students for 10 days and providing educational opportunities related to aerospace engineering.
In return, the Italian Rotary club hosts four students from Cocoa Beach Junior/Senior High School for ten days in September, with the visit focusing on Italian art and architecture.
Early Education Support
Rolling Readers is a non-profit organization committed to uniting children with books and caring adults to promote a community of life-long readers. Our club sponsors the program for first and second grade classrooms at Cape View and Roosevelt Elementary Schools.
Educators see third grade as the dividing line between learning to read and reading to learn. As part of the Dictionary Project, the club purchases a dictionary for each third grade student in four local area schools.
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Scholarships & Donations
Each year the club funds scholarships for highly deserving college-bound Cocoa Beach High School Seniors, typically donating $4000 a year.
The club has also donated tens of thousands of dollars to special community needs as they arise, including Christmas donations to needy families and Thanksgiving meals for the homeless. We donate to each non-profit that speaks to the club, and we support recurring events like student-organized car washes and the Club Zion Surf camp.