A ROTARY club has donated thousands of pounds to different charities since the coronavirus pandemic started.

The Rotary Club of Carlisle has handed out £2,000 to good causes since the virus began.

With charitable donations decreasing as a result of Covid-19, the club decided to act on this by giving £1,000 to The Eden Valley Hospice and £1,000 to the Great North Air Ambulance.

For the past 10 weeks, Carlisle Rotary Club has been hosting online meetings with an increasing number of members getting to grips with technology, enjoying talking to each other and listening to talks on a variety of subjects ranging from The Chevalier Saint George, to Beekeeping.

David Morton, of Carlisle Rotary Club, explained: “We chose those charities because they are local charities.

“With Covid-19 we thought that these charities would be struggling for donations.

“So we decided to donate this money quickly.”

The money that was divided between the two charities was donated by the club’s own members.

Talking about the Zoom meetings, Mr Morton was thrilled about how well they had been going.

He said: “They’ve been going very well. We meet once a week.

“Each week more and more people have been joining.

"There has been about 23 or 24 people coming on which has been magic.

“People who cannot physically leave the house have been coming on to join us so it’s been really good from that point of view.”

Each week the club has had a different speaker join their meetings.