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Rotarians will gather on the USS Hornet on Saturday night to do what they do best – raise money to help people around the world. 

The fund-raising party in Alameda will support Rotary International’s Polio-Plus Campaign, with a projected $30,000 being raised toward the eradication of polio in Ghana. 

Steve Holland, past president of the Rotary Club of Berkeley, said Polio Plus has been hugely successful in halting the disease, and Rotarians have donated $345 million to the campaign worldwide. 

Currently the campaign funds are paying for polio serum and for the publicity necessary to let people know they need to be inoculated. 

Holland, a past president of Berkeley Rotary, is one of the hosts this weekend for a conference attended by 330 Rotarians at the Berkeley Marina Radisson Hotel. 

The conference guests are members of 63 California Rotary Clubs in a district that stretches from Berkeley and Contra Costa County in the south, up to the Oregon border. 

Guest speakers at this year’s convention include Shirley S. Chater, Commissioner of the United States Social Security Administration; baseball analyst Joe Morgan, a former Cincinnati Reds second baseman; and baseball broadcaster Lon Simmons. 

Holland, an insurance executive and 12-year member of the club, said the last time the Berkeley hosted a district conference was 35 years ago. 

The local club was founded in 1916 and had more than 50 members by the end of its first year. Among its local activities, the Berkeley Rotary raised funds and built the Berkeley Art and Garden Center in 1965 for its 50th anniversary. 

Additionally, the club pledged more than $400,000 to fund a building drive in 1992 for the Berkeley YMCA. The club provides more than $25,000 annually to local community projects. 

On a district level the Berkeley Rotary Club is participating in an international service project that helps fund programs for young people in the Czech and Slovak Republics who have lost limbs. 

Holland said it is a $40,000 project in connection with another club. It involves the young people riding horses, a specialty program that otherwise would not exist in those countries.