On behalf of our club President, Garrett Adkins, and Ed Wilsek, the chairman of the Stone Crab Jam Music Festival Organizing Committee, we want to thank the City of Crystal River and the 300 volunteers who helped Kings Bay Rotary with our Annual Fund Raiser in November – The Stone Crab Jam Festival Music Festival.
The Kings Bay Rotary Club has been giving back to the local community over the past 38 years. We donated $70,000 for major renovations at the Academy of Environmental Sciences in 2023. We provided $45,000 to the City of Crystal River to support the purchase of Three Sisters Springs from a private owner. During Covid, the foundation donated $15,000 to United Way to support their efforts at a time when the demand for their services exceeded their resources. We contributed $8,000 to complete the George Washington Carver Community Center to enable the center to be finished. At the same time, we support local service projects headed by our members like Sherri’s Bare Essentials. This program, in partnership with the local schools, provides clothing to the schools for the children all during the year.
Fortunately, our club has been blessed with members who have devoted countless hours to fund-raising, living up to the motto of Rotary International – Service Above Self. One of our major projects over the last 17 years has been the Stone Crab Jam Music Festival, always scheduled for the first Saturday of November. This year we held our 17th annual festival despite having to clean up from 2 hurricanes with massive support from Crystal River City Management. Although attendance was down this year, we were still able to raise $65,000 for our donation fund for 2025. Part of this total, $17,671, was donated to the non-profit organizations who supplied about 300 volunteers to set-up, run and clean-up the venue for the event. We could not have done without them.
The organizations include The Path, Lecanto FFA High School, Lecanto FFA Middle School, The Afro-American Club of Citrus County, Crystal River High School Interact, Seven Rivers Christian School Honors Program, Friends of Nature Coast, Downtown Inverness Rotary, Inverness Rotary, NARLEO (National Association of Retired Law Enforcement Officers), Nature Coach Ministries, MainStreet, Academy of Environmental Sciences, NJROTC – Crystal River High School, WTI (Withlacoochee Technical College)
The following are pictures of some of the organizations that supplied volunteers.
