News & Notes - Current  January 25, 2008

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From The Forecaster:

Mary Tennant surrounded by children at a displaced peoples camp in Gulu, Uganda.

Service with a world view

Rotary clubs’ efforts stretch beyond southern Maine

By Kate Hayes

PORTLAND – Rotary clubs are well-known for their contributions to local community organizations. Each year, District 7780, which includes southern Maine and New Hampshire clubs, donates thousands of dollars to organizations including the Maine Cancer Foundation, Salvation Army, soup kitchens, high school scholarships and educational programs.  Their international missions are less visible, but the local clubs make an impact around the world, too.

“I think the general public has a positive image about the club locally,” Portland Rotary member George Crockett said, “but are not always aware of the efforts they make on an international basis.”

Crockett's club teamed with the Freeport Rotary and Pure Water for the World to initiate the Clean Water Project in Santa Barbara, Honduras. Honduras is the second poorest country in our hemisphere with 50,000 child deaths resulting from unsanitary water.

The Rotaries raised more than $163,000 to implement the project, which installed household filter units and now supplies nearly 2,000 families with pure water. The project continues to be monitored by representatives from the Portland and Freeport clubs.  In addition to making sure the filters operate properly, club members think it is important for the program to educate the community on the importance of hygiene and health issues. “The success of the effort depends on the active involvement of the village members,” Crockett says.

Crockett, who has been a Rotary member for nine years, said international work is important to the Rotary in two ways. First, he said, issues in other countries are “much more severe” than those in our own country, so we “owe it to the world to reach out to them.”  He also said it is important to support foreign Rotary clubs. In order for the Rotary Foundation to match a percentage of the money raised by local clubs, a Rotary must partner with the host country's club. This relationship fosters international cooperation and builds relationships between the foundation's 32,000 clubs from across the world, he said.

Mary Tennant joined the Brunswick Coastal Rotary four years ago with an established interest in international work. When she read an article in a church bulletin describing a displaced persons camp in Uganda, she applied for a grant through the Rotary Foundation to drill two new wells and repair three others at the camp.

The wells were completed in 2006 and now supply uncontaminated water to 50,000 people. Tennant has visited the camp in Uganda and said the people there are in “desperate situations,” so she wants to ensure support is continued by the Rotary. This year the Brunswick club plans to submit a grant for water holding tanks at three rural schools in the Rakai District of Uganda, where the AIDS epidemic started.  Tennant thinks this work is meaningful to the local club because the members share an interest in international service.

The Portland Rotary also sponsors “Hearts for Hearing,” a program serving the deaf in the Dominican Republic. Drs. Roger and Elizabeth Fagan, a husband-and-wife audiologist and speech language pathologist, have completed nine trips to the country and supplied hearing aids to 873 people.  Dr. Roger Fagan, who practices in Scarborough, said his favorite part of international work is the “rush and excitement of watching a child who's lost his hearing regain it and hear his mother's voice again.”

This February, the program is traveling to Good Samaritan Hospital in La Romana to supply new hearing aids and batteries for used ones.  Rotary International allows service to happen on a large scale, Fagan said, so that a “small club can have a big impact.”

The Cooperative for Education program run by the Yarmouth Rotary provides textbooks to middle school students in the rural highlands of Guatemala. These communities rely on an agricultural lifestyle, and the literacy rate among adults is less than 50 percent. The local club and Rotary Foundation have supported this program with $60,000.

Rotary provides the seed money for every child's first textbooks in math, Spanish, science and social studies and the families commit to paying a small annual fee for replacement books. This way, the Rotarians have initiated a self-sustaining program. In February, Rotary members plan to make two delivery trips, to meet with the teachers, students and local community.  Crockett says the Rotary Foundation's commitment to “Service Above Self” can be demonstrated both locally and internationally, but that international work gives club members a deeper understanding of the people and needs around the world.

“It brings a new dimension to service,” he said.

Kate Hayes can be reached at 781-3661 ext. 115 or khayes@theforecaster.net.