The Rotary Club
Of
A Service Club For Our West-Island Community
Rotary's motto, "Service Above Self" applies not only in
local circumstances, but across frontiers.
And Rotary is in a unique position to help as there are Rotary Clubs in more
than 160 countries - including some of the poorest in the world - which work
together to help suffering people, provide clean water, set up literacy
projects, provide medicine, improve sanitation, encourage women's co-ops and
micro loans, etc.
To finance these efforts the Rotary Club of Montreal-Lakeshore raises funds in a
number of ways, which can then - for international projects - be supplemented by
Rotary District 7040 and with Humanitarian Grants from Rotary International.
Furthermore, there is NO administrative cost involved in Rotary's projects.
A Club's international projects always go through another Rotary Club in a
development country, to ensure that the need is dire and properly assessed, and
that funds are spent carefully, with a reporting system that involves Rotary
International, the relevant Rotary District and the local Club
- and frequently, after completion, supplemented with a check up from traveling
Rotarians.
The Rotary Club of Montreal-Lakeshore has in the recent past undertaken a
'village development project' in Kenya, starting with a deep water well, hook up
of electric power, a 'zero-grazing project' for cattle, a dairy, a school, a
library, a village Banta and a farming training program, including audio-visual
equipment.
In Bangladesh we've supported a 'Micro-Loan' project, in India providing a
kitchen for a school, disaster relief in El Salvador, Turkey, India, the Balkans
and for Tsunami victims. Plus, provided medicine for indigent villagers in
Chile, street kids in Lima, Peru and poverty stricken children in Asuncion and
on Madagascar.
Our Current projects include:
1.) A Literacy Project for AIDS-orphans in Swaziland - and
2.) A Sanitation Project in Paraguay, and donation of medicine, plus a Volunteer
Service Grant.
LITERACY PROJECT:
In Swaziland (population) 1.2 million) 46% of all adults are HIV/AIDS infected
(!) As a consequence, there are now tens of thousands of AIDS-orphans in the
country. The villages try to keep them, by housing them wherever there is room
with local families. But as most people are very poor and can barely afford to
send their own kids to school (in Swaziland you have to pay) the AIDS-orphans go
without.
However, the local chief can donate a piece of land to help the orphans, a
so-called 'Neighborhood
Care Point', the concept being that, with the help of village volunteers, a
shelter of some sort can be put up to serve as 'school' for the children (mixed
ages, 5 to 16, boys and girls), where local persons can teach them basic
subjects. And as the children also need to be fed, to prepare a simple midday
meal for theme (or they'll go starving).
Also, the children can supposedly tend to a garden area to grow vegetables to
supplement the daily mean. But for that they need a water source and a fenced in
area to protect their garden from roving cattle, plus garden tools, etc.
The Montreal-Lakeshore Rotary Club is working closely with the Rotary Club of
Malkerns Valley, which is trying to feed the children and come up with basic
set-ups in five different village locations, to serve some 300 AIDS-orphans. (In
one location the children were taught in the open, in another they were crammed
into a borrowed chicken coop, and in the three others they had only makeshift
sheds.)
The Malkerns Valley Rotary Club had already provided the NCPs with latrines and
outdoor cooking stoves. But three of them had no access to water, for cooking
and for growing vegetables. And all five needed fenced in gardens. Plus proper
school houses.
The children were also in need of clothing, children's books, text books,
stationery supplies, school furniture, blackboards and shelving, plus garden
utensils. So an appeal for all these items was posted in West Island libraries
and articles printed in local newspapers. With astonishing results: Our Club had
visualized to ship one 20' container to Swaziland. We ended up filling first a
40' container - and then another 20-footer.
Rotary International does not support the financing of buildings. But we were
lucky to find a Canadian NGO, HOPE International Agency, which - after
consideration - agreed to put up small schools in five Neighborhood Care Points,
to accommodate a total of some 300 orphans.
When the buildings are completed and furnished, the children will have a place
to attend classes and to spend free time with books and playing. - Local
volunteers act as teachers.
One of our Club members, Jennifer Neville, and her teacher husband, will be
traveling to Swaziland in July '07 to help with various aspects of the Literacy
Project, including teaching and arranging games. Please view the Slideshow of
Jennifer's visit, by following this link
Swaziland Slide Show.
Here are some
pictures, after the first school houses were completed
and furnished. - For earlier pictures, for comparison, click on this link.
SANITATION PROJECT and MEDICINE for PARAGUAY.
This year's project is an extension of two previous trips to Paraguay with
medicine - carried there by Club member Andy Csisztu. In April, Andy will again
take medicine, provided by Health Partners International of Canada (donated by
some seventy of Canada's pharmaceutical manufacturers), worth $ 44,000 (at
wholesale) to be distributed to four clinics in Paraguay: A small
clinic/hospital for indigent children with leukemia, to a dispensary of medicine
in the poorest part of Asuncion, to a dialysis treatment centre and to a clinic
in northern Paraguay that treats children with parasitic and infectious
diseases.
In addition to providing medicine, the Rotary Clubs of Asuncion and
Montreal-Lakeshore will also be undertaking the construction of 31 latrines in a
very poor part of the country, to combat diseases caused by lack of sanitation.
Club member Andy Csisztu will spend two weeks in Paraguay to supervise the
construction by local volunteers.
Click here for an interview with Andy Csisztu in a local newspaper.
Please read the W.I.
Gazette article about one of Andy's trips.
And about FUTURE PROJECTS:
We have tentative plans for providing medicine to treat AIDS-orphans in Benin -
and indigent people in Lebanon; plus, likely a shipment of refurbished computers
to schools in that country.
We may also be donating medicine - and possibly computers - to a college for
AIDS-orphans in Kampala, Uganda. And put together a project with a Rotary Club
in Mozambique.
That is at our Club level. Besides that, Rotary International is active in major
relief efforts and, above all, (with UNICEF and the World Health Organization)
in the eradication of Polio, worldwide. Up to this point, Rotary International
has contributed more than U.S. $ 625 million and provided manpower by the tens
of thousands to inoculate children around the Globe. When the last pockets of
Polio virus in Africa and India are eliminated, hopefully in the very near
future, mankind will be rid of this terrible disease for good!
Follow-up on a now completed project in Kapseret Kenya, this Powerpoint says it all
