By Rotary International

Students at a school recently equipped with toilets. Water projects in schools lower dropout rates and prevent the spread of disease.

By Sandy Forster

The young girl shyly held my hand as she took me on a tour of her school — similar, yet strikingly different, from the schools I knew at home, half a world away. The students were eager to have a visitor and excited to show me their work. Since supplies were limited, I could see many students sharing paper, short nubby pencils, and schoolbooks.

I noticed that in the upper primary school grades, four through eight, the classrooms had fewer students, especially girls. The headmaster explained that many children, girls especially, drop out of school to help their mothers bring water from creeks or rivers or when the girls reach the age when their menstrual cycles begin because they don’t have access to bathrooms. He said this particular school didn’t have a water source, nor toilets or even latrines for the students to use.

This first experience visiting a Rotarian-led water and sanitation project site has stayed with me throughout the years. Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in School programs are vital for community development and growth. Because of these …read more

Source:: Rotary International Blog

By Rotary International

Rotary members in Nepal build shelters for earthquake survivors.

By Roshan Maharjan, Rotary E-Club of District 3292 Nepal

I was finishing a lecture at the Academia International College in Lalitpur, Kathmandu, Nepal, on 25 April when the ground began to shake with increasing violence and I had trouble standing on my own. Supporting myself on the side of a computer table, I noticed my students were very frightened. As I consoled them as best I could, I also worried about my mother, brother, sister, and wife and children. It wasn’t until I got the text from them that all was OK that I could breathe a sigh of relief, but I was suffering from a terrible headache. The earthquake was 7.9 in magnitude.

After a few hours at the college compound, I decided to go see my family, and found my motorbike knocked over, with the mirror and clutch broken, but usable. My apartment and everyone in it were OK. I was also relieved to find my mother’s old house still standing, but it had developed worse cracks and was not safe to live in. There were plenty of aftershocks, so we stayed out in the open for a few hours until my …read more

Source:: Rotary International Blog

By Rotary International

Members of Interact deliver the durable soccer balls in Vietnam.

By Sallyann Price, Rotary staff

At the Rotary International Convention in São Paulo this summer, a group of American high school students kicked a funny-looking soccer ball around the House of Friendship. The Interact club members from high schools in the Bay Area of California, USA, were raising money to send a volunteer team to Vietnam to give away 2,400 of these balls.

On assignment for The Rotarian, I traveled to Vietnam in July with a team of Interactors and Rotary members. The balls, produced by One World Play Project, a nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, are made of an unusual foam blend that kicks and bounces like a soccer ball but won’t puncture, deflate, or otherwise fall apart, an important consideration in the poor communities where children are least likely to have access to safe athletic equipment. In Vietnam, as in many other countries where One World Play Project partners with local agencies to distribute balls, kids will kick around whatever they can find — sometimes rocks, or bundles of banana leaves.

Over two weeks, we traveled from the northern capital city of Hanoi, through the mountains of the …read more

Source:: Rotary International Blog

By Rotary International

Lindsay Griswold and her students at the Gede Special School in Kenya.

By Lindsay Griswold

My passion for working with youth at an international level first blossomed during my time with the Peace Corps in Kenya. I served as a Deaf education volunteer from 2006 to 2008 at Gede Special School in Coast Province.

While I was not aware then of the significance Rotary would later have in my life, the school was built by the Rotary Club of Malindi, Kenya, a few months before my arrival. Gede serves not only students who are Deaf but also those who have physical and cognitive disabilities such as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and even polio.

Living and teaching in Kenya was an incredibly meaningful journey that I continue to learn from and reflect on, even today. I miss the mamas at the village cafe, the beauty of the Indian Ocean, and most importantly, my former students.

My love of biking flourished when I moved to Chicago after the Peace Corps. I bought a road bike from Ciclo Urbano, a West Side bicycle shop that supports local at-risk youth through its earn-a-bike summer program. I used this as my sole mode of transportation and quickly learned the necessity …read more

Source:: Rotary International Blog

By Rotary International

Katherine Ward (middle) and her daughter (behind, left) in Turkey.

By Katherine Ward

Thirty years ago, at the age of 18, I started a grand adventure and boarded a plane on my own toward Istanbul, Turkey. I was headed off on a yearlong Rotary Youth Exchange.

Before I left, I attended several camps that prepared us for culture shock and gave us a general sense of some of the changes we could expect. My high school wouldn’t accept any credits from Turkey, so I had accelerated my course schedule, completing all but one required course to graduate.

I spoke absolutely no Turkish but, despite my struggles with language learning at the beginning, my host families were wonderful. They took in a scared, noncommunicative teenager and showered me with affection, kind concern, and caring. They were hard to leave at the end of the year. One of my host fathers even made a special show of sending me home with the keys to the house, so I knew I’d always have a home there. I still have them, to this day.

Holidays were odd. For Halloween, the other exchange students and I carved a watermelon during lunch break at school. We skipped school on what would …read more

Source:: Rotary International Blog