Beach Rescue Tubes
The Rotary Club of Cocoa Beach, in partnership with the City of Cocoa Beach, provides life-saving rescue stations along the beaches of our community.
Collectively, there are 56 rescue tube stations along the public beaches in Cocoa Beach. Each station has installed a rescue tube flotation device that can be used by a competent swimmer to assist someone in distress if a lifeguard is not present. Rescue tubes reduce the probability of rescuer drownings by providing sufficient floatation for both a struggling swimmer and someone attempting a rescue.
For more information on the club’s rescue tube service project, click here.
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
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.
Rotary Student Exchange
Rotary’s Short-Term Exchange Program (STEP) presents opportunities for students to advance their knowledge and world understanding by allowing them to visit a different, non-English speaking country for a limited period of time.
Long-term exchanges last a full academic year, and students attend local schools and live with multiple host families in the same school district.
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.
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.