Affair of the Heart - Benefiting Gift of Life NJ

 
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Every year since Valentine's Day, 1998 the Maplewood Rotary Club has celebrated Spring with the Affair of the Heart Dinner Dance.  This is one of the Maplewood Rotary club's major fundraisers and brings together about 200 guests; Rotarians, local supporters, family and friends to celebrate the joys of being a part of such an amazing community and support our Gift of Life programs. Your Rotary hosts provide a wonderful cocktail hour, live and silent auctions, sumptuous buffet dinner and live entertainment!

Each year the club chooses a recipient of its Citizenship Award and honors that person at the dinner. The award is given to an individual who lives by the Rotary International motto "Service Above Self" - a person who goes above and beyond in their personal efforts to make Maplewood and the surrounding communities a better place to live.  In past years, we have honored, Beth Daugherty from the Board of Education, Tom Kerns from the HK Project, and Joe Callaghan from the Maplewood Fire Department, plus many other deserving and dedicated people.

Proceeds from the evening primarily go to support the club's involvement in the District's Gift of Life Program (www.giftoflifenj.org) . Gift of Life Inc., NJ is a regional charity 100% run solely by volunteers, both Rotarians and non-Rotarians alike. They organize, sponsor and hosts children from under developed countries that are in dire need of life saving heart operations. The surgeries are done at hospitals in the United States, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka and through medical missions abroad to many countries.

Since the organization began in 1986, GOL Inc., NJ has saved more than 1500 children. Our club has proudly sponsored 8 of these children for life saving surgeries in the U.S. and helped fund several overseas missions, that saved dozens of more young lives. In 2012, through the generous support of those that have attended the Affair of the Heart in past years, we donated $30,000.00 to Gift of Life Inc, NJ as the sole sponsor of a mission to Kemerovo, Russia organized by the International Children's Heart Foundation in Memphis, TN. This mission successfully operated on 14 children, including two "1st of their kind surgeries" in Russia.

More information on this event and Gift of Life, please contact our Event Chairpersons Rick Porter, at rickporter10@gmail.com  or Steve Gussen at sjgussen@gmail.com