Sunrise bulletin for the week of April 4, 2012
Posted by Rob Goodell
on Apr 4, 2012
Back at the Coast Hotel after two meetings across the street, 17 members were joined on Wednesday morning by Barbara Taylor, a visiting Rotarian from Hanover, Pennsylvania, and Keaton Bast, a guest who works in commodities downtown and is curious about our club. President Matthew Lynam called the meeting to order (not as easy as it sounds, given this bunch) and Bill Sheddy started us off with a nearly-perfect rendition of Rotary's Four-Way Test. We missed you Banu, Sonya, Lori, David and Lawrence.
The buzz this morning was everyone's plans to get away for the Easter weekend. With the perfect, warm and sunny weather we've been having here, I can't imagine why. John will be driving to Montana through blizzard conditions, Robert French will be at the San Diego Zoo (where there's no blizzard planned) and Diana Theman is flying to Montreal (blizzards aren't predicted, but you never know). Julie Mantle's just back from sunny Mexico. Alfredo Carrete's family has deserted him so he's staying home alone and looking for trouble.
Rotary moment
John Haley biefly reviewed the history of The Rotary Foundation and its worldwide leadership in polio eradication since 1985. An impressive story. It was also mentioned that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has recently given another $50 million to TRF to help complete the job, bringing their total to some $305 million. Wow! Our personal and club contributions are still important, however, as the remaining three countries are difficult (read: expensive) to reach with the vaccines.
Announcements
The Rotary World Help Network, the volunteer group that ships medical supplies and other items for local clubs doing service projects overseas, has asked who will be our club's contact person. Matthew plans to work with them after his term as president is completed. In the meantime, Carlos Obregon volunteered and Ann-Shirley Goodell will help as needed.
Last evening, King George School was pleased to hear about Youth Exchange and our plans for 2013-2014, following their great year with Hanne Kooistra as a student. Hanne will be staying with Ann-Shirley and me for a few days in France next month. She has sent a 10-minute slide presentation on her year in Canada, which Cam Scott will schedule as a program sometime soon. Hanne may be able to speak with the club on Skype at that meeting, too. She's in university in the Netherlands now and says she's doing fine.
Cam relayed a message from former member Paul Hamilton, who will MC next week's hockey team auction, that anyone who misses the meeting on April 11 will be sure to bid high on a team that has no chance of winning the Stanley Cup. Be there or be at his mercy!
Today's program
Our speaker this morning was Chip Morgan, founder and CEO of The Africa Water Bank, who cited a UN report that forecasts a serious shortage of potable water for a growing world population. Chip told of his recent visit to a village in Kenya, where he joined a group of girls and women on their 6-hour daily walk, about ten kilometres each way, to the nearest spring so they could get 20 litres each of dirty water to carry home for their famlies for drinking, cooking and bathing. When he offered to help carry the water, they told him, "In our country, men don't carry water." Of course, the girls who do this work can't attend school.
It's estimated that some 400 million Africans do not have access to clean water, so millions of children die each year from drinking contaminated water. Rotary and other charitable groups have tried to help over the years, primarily by drilling about 390,000 borehole wells with pumps, of which 155,000 are now abandoned because no one locally can maintain and repair the equipment and because the villages feel no ownership or responsibility for this equipment. Good intentions by many donors have resulted in no long-term benefits to the villages. How sad.
The Africa Water Bank follows a very different approach. It offers a low-tech process of collecting ground rainwater, filtering it with sand and charcoal, and storing it in large tanks. This system has no moving parts requiring maintenance and uses the heavy seasonal rains to help the village get through the dry seasons. Each village must pay 15 percent of the installation cost, either in cash or in materials or in labour, so there is a sense of local ownership. The village charges users four cents per 20-litre container which pays for periodic cleaning and maintenance of the system.
Many of these ground rainwater systems have been installed in African villages, but there are currently 200 villages on a wait list. The Africa Water Bank is looking for help, both financial and volunteer manpower, to allow these villages to have water systems of their own. To find out how you can help, visit www.africawaterbank.org or on Facebook at AfricaWaterBank.
The buzz this morning was everyone's plans to get away for the Easter weekend. With the perfect, warm and sunny weather we've been having here, I can't imagine why. John will be driving to Montana through blizzard conditions, Robert French will be at the San Diego Zoo (where there's no blizzard planned) and Diana Theman is flying to Montreal (blizzards aren't predicted, but you never know). Julie Mantle's just back from sunny Mexico. Alfredo Carrete's family has deserted him so he's staying home alone and looking for trouble.
Rotary moment
John Haley biefly reviewed the history of The Rotary Foundation and its worldwide leadership in polio eradication since 1985. An impressive story. It was also mentioned that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has recently given another $50 million to TRF to help complete the job, bringing their total to some $305 million. Wow! Our personal and club contributions are still important, however, as the remaining three countries are difficult (read: expensive) to reach with the vaccines.
Announcements
The Rotary World Help Network, the volunteer group that ships medical supplies and other items for local clubs doing service projects overseas, has asked who will be our club's contact person. Matthew plans to work with them after his term as president is completed. In the meantime, Carlos Obregon volunteered and Ann-Shirley Goodell will help as needed.
Last evening, King George School was pleased to hear about Youth Exchange and our plans for 2013-2014, following their great year with Hanne Kooistra as a student. Hanne will be staying with Ann-Shirley and me for a few days in France next month. She has sent a 10-minute slide presentation on her year in Canada, which Cam Scott will schedule as a program sometime soon. Hanne may be able to speak with the club on Skype at that meeting, too. She's in university in the Netherlands now and says she's doing fine.
Cam relayed a message from former member Paul Hamilton, who will MC next week's hockey team auction, that anyone who misses the meeting on April 11 will be sure to bid high on a team that has no chance of winning the Stanley Cup. Be there or be at his mercy!
Today's program
Our speaker this morning was Chip Morgan, founder and CEO of The Africa Water Bank, who cited a UN report that forecasts a serious shortage of potable water for a growing world population. Chip told of his recent visit to a village in Kenya, where he joined a group of girls and women on their 6-hour daily walk, about ten kilometres each way, to the nearest spring so they could get 20 litres each of dirty water to carry home for their famlies for drinking, cooking and bathing. When he offered to help carry the water, they told him, "In our country, men don't carry water." Of course, the girls who do this work can't attend school.
It's estimated that some 400 million Africans do not have access to clean water, so millions of children die each year from drinking contaminated water. Rotary and other charitable groups have tried to help over the years, primarily by drilling about 390,000 borehole wells with pumps, of which 155,000 are now abandoned because no one locally can maintain and repair the equipment and because the villages feel no ownership or responsibility for this equipment. Good intentions by many donors have resulted in no long-term benefits to the villages. How sad.
The Africa Water Bank follows a very different approach. It offers a low-tech process of collecting ground rainwater, filtering it with sand and charcoal, and storing it in large tanks. This system has no moving parts requiring maintenance and uses the heavy seasonal rains to help the village get through the dry seasons. Each village must pay 15 percent of the installation cost, either in cash or in materials or in labour, so there is a sense of local ownership. The village charges users four cents per 20-litre container which pays for periodic cleaning and maintenance of the system.
Many of these ground rainwater systems have been installed in African villages, but there are currently 200 villages on a wait list. The Africa Water Bank is looking for help, both financial and volunteer manpower, to allow these villages to have water systems of their own. To find out how you can help, visit www.africawaterbank.org or on Facebook at AfricaWaterBank.