Catoctin Area Civitan Club Extends Its Outreach

Grace Eyler

The Catoctin Civitan Club has been busy this year, raising money and reaching out to people in need throughout the community. With a handful of active members, the club has contributed well over $74,000 back to the community, just this year. Civitan Clubs normally only reach out to individuals who have intellectual or developmental disabilities to offer support and help with expenses: however, we are lucky to have a club that helps people with other challenges as well.

Recently, concerned citizen, Bill Wachter, contacted the Civitans, in hopes they might be able to help a lady who was bed-ridden and unable to tend to outside upkeep of her home. When volunteers Ginger and Bill Malone and Mary Dal-Favero caught wind of this, they scheduled a day to visit the lady to clean up brush and fallen branches. They plan to go back in the spring and help maintain the yard once again.

The very next week, the Club received another call, providing a lead to help another local woman. Fortunately, the Civitan Club may be able to help her financially, while she is on disability.

Mary, Civitan secretary, explained, “Our club is to help people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, but these people we are helping have physical disabilities in life, but we can help them!”

In October, the Club presented the town of Thurmont with a check for $74,000 (phase 1 of 3) or an inclusive playground for handicapped children, located behind the Thurmont Senior Center. The total amounts to $288,000. The playground will feature a rubber mat ground, a zip line, and a multi-functional “teeter tunnel.”

In the previous year, fundraising enabled the Club to purchase three Chromebooks for the special education department at Catoctin High School. The Chromebooks were such a help, volunteers promised eleven more laptops to the school. In the end, they will be providing thirteen from a donation amounting to over $2,000.

So, how is such a small club able to raise enormous funds? Along with other small fundraisers, a blue toilet does the trick. If you wake up with a toilet in your front yard, thank a member of your family—you’ve fallen victim to the toilet. You may pay $35.00 to place the potty in someone’s yard; to remove the toilet, pay $15.00 and give it to someone else. Fortunately, to insure the lawn ornament doesn’t show itself again, it’s another $10.00.

The traveling toilet has visited close to twenty homes in our area—you could be next!

Are you interested in being a part of the Catoctin Area Civitan Club? They are always welcoming new volunteers—not just from Thurmont. They serve the entire Catoctin feeder area. Meetings are held on the second Monday of every month at 6:30 p.m. in Thurmont at the Main Street Building.