ROTARY SHINES WORLD SERVICE BENEFICIARIES

Over the past few years, the Board has designated the proceeds of Rotary Shines to be split in the following way:  $5,000 to PolioPlus and the remaining split equally between Community and World Service projects.  This year, the World Service Committee's grant themes were water/sanitation and economic sustainability through female literacy.  After reviewing the applications, they have chosen the following recipients for Rotary Shines: 

1.     Kenya Works Makini Initiative - Lack of menstrual supplies is a roadblock to education for many Kenyan adolescent girls.  Recent studies have said up to 65% of women and girls in Kenya cannot afford sanitary pads.  Evidence suggests that the time around puberty is one in which girls drop out of school or are absent and miss significant days of school.  Limited access to safe, affordable, convenient and appropriate methods of dealing with menstruation has far reaching implications for the rights, physical, social, education and mental well being of many adolescent girls.  Kenya Works would like to bring reusable sanitary napkin pads to 1,000 Kenyan girls. 

2.     Solar and bio-digester powered toilets and showers in Jehangirabad, Odisha, India that will serve 200 people daily from 11 villages.  Solar power will provided to the school, for internet, street lighting, drinking water and irrigation.  The surplus power will be sold to villagers. This project will be a partnership between the Rotary Club of Appleton, IndUS Fox Valley, ADIRE India and USA and the Rotary Club of Bhubaneswar, India.  The next step will be to integrate biogas and solar power technologies for community sanitation. 

3.     Sanitation at Muramba High School, Muyinga Province, Burundi, Africa which consists of two components: installation of two toilets and two showers in the dormitory for girls and collection of rainwater from the roof of Muramba High School building.  Muramba High School started back in 1991 as Junior High School.  Since 2007, it is a complete high school with 663 students (boys and girls). There are 6 pit latrines that are dirty and smelly.  Only six flushing toilets are available for the students: three for girls and three for boys.  The number of toilets is insufficient compared to the number of students.  The school would like to build more decent toilets in the future but the current pressing problem is the lack of plumbing and running water to insure flushing.  From time to time, rainwater is collected and stored in buckets and used for that purpose.  This lack of hygiene is detrimental to the health of the whole school community. The requested funds will also be spent on buying and installing rain gutters and a plastic tank with of capacity of 2000 liters. This stocked water will be used for flushing the six toilets and cleaning classrooms.  Egide Nimubona would like to plan a trip to visit these project in 2016. 

 
Last year, the World Service proceeds focused on clean water projects. The May 2012 issues of The Rotarian stated that "water and sanitation one of Rotary's 6 areas of focus is a local concern of global importance".  The two beneficiaries were the Burundi Project that provided clean water supply system for Kinama II Elementary School that provided new water storage and plumbing. Reverse osmosis was used for water purification. This elementary school has approximately750 students and 16 teachers and no running water. The school is state supported and serves lower to middle class children.  Students had to go fetch polluted water from neighboring creeks, wasting school time and drinking unclean water. This was a partnership between the Rotary Clubs of Appleton & Gangavathi, and Sri Vidya Foundation.  The Rotary Club of Gangavathi supervised the project and was implemented in 45 days.  The Sridhar family visited the installation in January 2014. 

Burundi Project provided a clean water supply system for Mubimbi III Elementary School (Mubimbi County, Bujumbura Province).  The population of Burundi is 9.8 million people and the country is slightly smaller than Maryland.  About 10% of the people live in the city and 90% on subsistence farms.  The literacy rate is 67.2%, life expectancy is 61 years, 345,788 are in secondary school and 29,269 in post secondary school.  The demand for potable water is not met despite the relatively abundant water resources.  Only 42% of homes in the capital city Bujumbura have (unreliable) running water.  Only 32.5% of Elementary schools have drinking clean.   This was a joint project with the Rotary Club of Appleton and Bujumbura Rotary Club in Bujumbura.

 So, have your purchased your ticket yet to support these projects?