Our Service Projects

Anciano Tower Holiday Gifts

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Anciano Towers is an apartment building that houses lower income senior citizens located at 227 N Ute Ave, Montrose. Every year beginning in November our members sign up to purchase or obtain donations for the various items we need to fill 49 bags for 32 women and 17 men living at these apartments. In December at our committee meeting Altrusans form an assembly line and fill the bags with much needed items for these residents.

We have a small budget to purchase these items but many of the items are donated by some of our members from their store/business or them personally and we receive some items from the community.

Annual Educational Scholarships

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Altrusa International of Montrose awards scholarships each year to graduates of Montrose and Olathe High Schools. These scholarships are awarded to graduates that have taken academically rigorous courses, showcase their leadership and community involvement and express their future goals and philanthropy. Scholarships are awarded through a committee that takes time to thoroughly evaluate and discuss each application. Scholarships are dispersed to schools of higher education in equal portions at the start of each semester during their first year of college, the number of recipients may vary. Altrusa International of Montrose also values students who chose to attend the Technical College of The Rockies and have a designated scholarship for TCR. The application and review process are the same. We look forward to supporting our young people as they pursue their dreams.

Apple Awards

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Apple Awards are awarded each month to deserving educators from throughout the Montrose County School District. Awardees are teachers, administrators or staff that go above and beyond in the education of our youth. These are decided by administration at each building. We are proud to support and recognize the hardworking members of the Montrose County School District.

Bosom Buddies Walk/Run

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Altrusa helps out with the Bosom Buddies Walk/Run in October every year.  

• We give an annual donation of $300. 

• Obtain donated snacks such as bagels & cream cheese, yogurts, bananas, oranges and any other food items needed and plastic silverware from City Market and Safeway.

• We also help out, as needed, in the following areas prior to the walk/run:

  • Help roll the t-shirts

  • help fill the goodie bags with rolled t-shirts and schwag the day prior to the walk/run

  • help set up the bags in alphabetical order for pickup on race day

• The day of the walk/run

  • we cut up bagels and fruit and put out on trays along with cream cheese and yogurt; replenish as needed throughout the event and clean up

  • help with people signing up

• Hand out the bags to those pre-registered as they come in

First Grade Book Giveaway

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The Literacy Committee is a key component of Altrusa International of Montrose and involves year-round projects, such as the First Grade Book Giveaway held in May. The committee selects and purchases an age appropriate children’s book to distribute to all first graders in the RE-1J School District.
Early on, the club collaborated with the Montrose Regional Library to help increase awareness and encourage participation in the library’s summer reading program and to ensure that every first grader has a library card.
Altrusa’s Literacy Committee now handles the project exclusively. Through its efforts, a total of 1600 children’s books have been distributed to first graders over the past three years.

Flashcard Project

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Our Literacy Committee initiated a new project to help second graders within the Montrose School District to have practice addition and subtraction flashcards available to them in their classroom to help them master addition and subtraction at this critical learning age and to approach the learning of math as a fun exercise. We purchased a set of flashcards for every second grader in the Montrose School District (410 students).
We labeled each pack of cards and sorted the flashcards into 36 bins for all 18 classes, including all of the following elementary schools, Cottonwood, Johnson, Oak Grove, Olathe, Northside, and Pomona and then the club members delivered these flashcards to each elementary school and met with most second grade teachers, who showed tremendous appreciation for the donation. We visited several of the classrooms and enjoyed seeing the enthusiasm from the students as well. It is our intention that these
flashcards be used in all of these classrooms to give each student a head start on their math future. Next year we plan to give each third-grade class multiplication and division flashcards to help them advance in their math skills.

Haven House

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Haven House is a transitional housing facility for people moving from
homelessness to acquiring their own living quarters (apartments or
purchasing their own homes). Altrusa adopted this project seven years
ago, fund raising for a year prior to updating the first rooms. We have been
fortunate in that many local nonprofits have supported this project with us.
Once residents have successfully completed their probationary period,
Altrusa will update a resident’s room/suite. This includes new bedding
(mattress pads, sheets, quilt/comforter and pillow protectors), pillows,
towels, shower curtains, liners, shower hooks, clothes hampers,
trash cans, portable drawer units, area rugs and lamps along with
miscellaneous items. The items placed in the rooms are the residents to
take with them when they graduate from Haven House and move into their
own homes.
Originally Altrusa would update resident rooms three times a year. As we
caught up with the rooms that were eligible to be updated, this shifted to
once a year. The numbers of children we have seen in Haven House
during the installation of new items have opened our eyes yet more to this
situation.

International Relations

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Altrusa’s International Relations Committee identifies a worthy international project to support, each year, with membership approval.  We have successfully completed projects benefiting children, students, the elderly and family units through education, literacy, construction, health and hygiene in third-world regions around the world.  In combination with our Kiva microfinance loans, we have contributed to projects in 66 countries.

Partnership with Western Colorado Friends of the Himalayas ensures that our funds are matched and a project selected that will impact the greatest number of disadvantaged residents in poverty stricken rural communities in Nepal with complete transparency and accountability.

Kiva Micro-loans

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Kiva Microfinance Loans – Since 2009 our International Relations Committee has extended the club’s impact to help underserved people around the world. We are able to select a borrower, lend a small amount of money and once they repay that amount, we are able to relend to another individual. To date we have made 246 microloans, totaling over $6,000 to people in 65 countries. “Through Kiva's work, students can pay for tuition, women can start businesses, farmers are able to invest in equipment and families can afford needed emergency care.” (Kiva.org)

Love Hug Bears

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Love Hug Bears is a community service project of our Altrusa club.  Altrusa obtains the bears from a local store owner/Altrusa member.  Each bear has a Certificate of Adoption which we attach indicating the Love Hug Bear is a special gift from Altrusa International of Montrose. We deliver about 3 to 4 dozen bears per quarter to Montrose Regional Hospital. 
Most of the bears are left at the Emergency Room for children that need medical attention. 
There are also bears left at the hospital registration area for children being admitted.

Make A Difference Day

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On Saturday, October 28th , we celebrated this year’s Make A Difference Day – “Make a Senior Smile”, by visiting 10 seniors (seven living at The Homestead and three living independently).
We put together a lovely gift basket for each containing lotion, eye glass microfiber cloth, soft socks, calendar, several occasion cards, book of 20 stamps, hand towel, a homemade jam, small loaf of bread and a book by one of our members to name a few items (all contained in a cute plastic blue basket).
Then in December we continued our Make A Senior Smile by writing Christmas cards to all the residents at The Homestead along with Christmas cards to the three ladies living independently.

Welcome Home Alliance For Veterans - Spouses Lunch

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Altrusa of Montrose started taking a warm meal at least once a year to the Welcome Home Alliance For Veterans monthly spouses lunch, which began in January 2022. However, in December 2023, they let us know they needed a meal for their spouses holiday lunch and we provided a wonderful meal for 30 ladies of homemade chicken and noodles, salad, rolls and added to their array of desserts. Then in January 2024, we provided a warm meal again for 30 ladies of homemade lasagna, salad, rolls and brownies. It is our sincere pleasure to provide a meal to these women who have sacrificed for us, and we enjoy sitting down and talking with them.