THE ROTARY CLUB OF BANBRIDGE
International (World Community) Service
Projects for 2007-08
ROMBO project
Rombo is a village in Kenya, with a population of approximately 1,000
people.
An Irish lady, Elaine Bannon, has worked tirelessly for five years with what
little aid she could raise from her family and friends back home. She has
successfully built schools, water wells, water pipelines, purchased a tractor
and a jeep, sponsored women’s business groups, organised FGM (female genital
mutilation) talks and sponsored children in local schools. Elaine has made Kenya
her new home and intends to live the rest of her life in Rombo.
We have raised £500.00 for this worthy project.
East Timor
£500.00 has been raised to help relieve hunger in this area in Africa.
Aqua Boxes
The idea is to provide in the wake
of both man-made and natural disasters a rapid response provision of safe
drinking water and welfare aid items. e.g. Tsunami (Visit our Archived
Reports page), and Bangledesh, which was hit by that
terrible cyclone on 16th November 2007. We have already responded this year with five
aqua boxes and we may yet improve on this.
The Aquabox costs £45 and comprises a 75 litre container with 4 survival
bags, 1 large box liner to protect goods from water damage, 1 filler and tap
and 1 pack of bespoke purification tablets - enough for 1100 litres of
purified water
There is also an "Aquabox 30" which costs £250 and comprises the container filled with 30
filters, taps and 30 purification tablets.
All Rotary's Aqua Boxes stocks are sent to surviving victims of the the latest disaster, so they are needed constantly because the only certainty is that there will be a great need somewhere in the world and we must be ready.
Shelter Boxes
We have all seen the horror of the earthquake in Pakistan and
Kashmir.
A shelter box is a large tent which can house up to ten people, and it comes
complete with sleeping bags, a means of cooking and many other life saving
items.
For more detail follow the Shelter Box link from our Links page.
One shelter box costs £490. Last year Rotarians in Ireland were set a target of 100 of these life saving boxes (the brainchild of an English Rotarian); the target was reached three times over.
Discarded Spectacles
These are left by members of the
public at various collection points and packaged by club members for
despatch to the third world. It is comforting to know that our old
spectacles
could mean life itself to the recipients.
The Club have been consistently
collecting 700-800 pairs annually and are continuing to do so. Already this
year we have sent 714 pairs.
A social event is intended to raise funds for our efforts in the international arena.