Eight area charities were selected recently by a lottery drawing to be recipients of funding from the 2012 Smith Mountain Lake Charity Home Tour that will be held Oct. 5-7.

Charities selected by the lottery drawing were Bedford Hospice House, Bedford Pregnancy Center, CASA of Central Virginia, Helping Hands of Franklin County, Lake Christian Ministries, Smith Mountain Lake Good Neighbors, Southern Virginia Child Advocacy Center and STEP Inc.

This was the second year a lottery has been used to select the participating charities from those who submitted qualified applications.

Pidge Morgan, a member of the Smith Mountain Lake Rotary Club, will travel to India on Feb. 13 as part of a 35-member team to help immunize children against polio.

Polio is a crippling disease that still paralyzes and sometimes kills children in various parts of the world.

The 35-member team is composed of members of Rotary, a worldwide humanitarian organization that has polio eradication as its main philanthropic goal.

The team will join other volunteers and health workers to administer drops of oral polio vaccine during an immunization campaign that will target millions of children under age 5.

SATURDAY, FEB. 4

Park Ranger Betsy Haynes will present "Beyond the Slave Cabin Door: Creating a Sense of Place" at Booker T. Washington National Monument at 2 p.m. For more information, call 540-721-2094.

The R.E.A.D to a dog program will be at the Westlake Library from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. For more information, call the library (540) 483-3098 (ext. 3).

SUNDAY, FEB. 5

A costumed presentation from the Civil War will be at the Discovery Center at Smith Mountain Lake State Park from 3 to 4 p.m. Ticket charge includes parking. For more information, call 297-6066.

The Friends of Smith Mountain Lake State Park will present their second program of the Winter Lecture Series at Smith Mountain Lake State Park. Patrick Shroeder will be a special guest at the Discovery Center from 3 to 4 p.m. For more information, call 540-297-6066.