Weekly Elixir – Week of November 5, 2007

World Interact Week

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Congratulations to the new Rotary Interact Club in Anguilla! Welcome and Well done!

By Ryan Hyland
Rotary International News - 1 November 2007

Every 5-11 November, Rotary International celebrates World Interact Week. Interact is a Rotary-sponsored service club for young people ages 14 to 18. The program gives teens an opportunity to participate in meaningful service projects while developing leadership skills.

Here’s just one example of how Interactors are making a difference.

A promotional effort led by the Interact Club of Brasov, Romania, rallied more than 100 people to donate blood at the Transfusion Center of Brasov in an effort to increase Romania’s blood reserves.

Romania ranks last in Europe, with only 1.7 percent of the population participating in blood donation, resulting in a critical situation in hospitals across Brasov.

Many surgeries that require blood cannot be performed because of low reserves.

For two weeks in February, club president Andreea Timpea and 26 other Interactors traveled to high schools and universities throughout Brasov. On a mission to get the word out, they distributed pamphlets, hung posters, and gave presentations on the importance of blood donation. Interactors, along with the director of the transfusion center, Laurentia Floea, also appeared on local television to promote the campaign’s kickoff.

To maintain sufficient blood reserves, the center needs at least 50 donors each day. Before the campaign, it averaged only five per day, but the publicity and kickoff helped boost that number to 20. The Interact club and the center plan to continue spreading the word in hopes of reaching 50 donors daily.

"I’m excited about being a part of a campaign that will change the way Romania thinks about blood donation," says Timpea. "I’m glad Interact has given me an opportunity to help."

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Here are just a few other projects highlighting Interactors' commitment to service:

• When they discovered a local hospital had no toys for its young patients, the Interact Club of Hoërskool Schoonspruit, South Africa sponsored a toy drive.

• Both the Interact Clubs of Sri Sankara Vidyasharamam and Parimalam, India, focus their efforts on AIDS education to help fight the spread of the disease.

• The Interact Club of Gan Yavne, Israel, reach out to less fortunate youth in their community by sponsoring a camp for local children.

• In partnership with their local media, the Interact Club of San Luis, Argentina, promoted drug and alcohol-free living to the youth of their community.

"Rotary's commitment to youth will not be complete if we do not also nurture healthy social values such as civic-consciousness, caring for others, and concern for the environment at an early age which is possible through support for the formation of more Interact Clubs," says Mark K.Y. Wong, chair of RI's Interact Committee. "This way we will have a ready pool of future Rotaractors, and Rotarians too."

10 Reasons You Should Care About Water - the essence of life - Week of October 29, 2007

10 Reasons You Should Care About Water - the essence of life


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In recognition of Rotary’s significant efforts to provide safe water and sanitation and its commitment to sustainable development worldwide, the United Nations Association of New York has honoured Rotary International and The Rotary Foundation of RI with its 2007 Humanitarian Award on 25 October, 2007.

We, as individual Rotarians, can help by getting directly involved. Share Rotary!

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International Decade for Action - Water for Life 2005-2015

In 2003, The United Nations General Assembly declared 2005 to 2015 as the International Decade for Action on "Water for Life," with a primary goal to promote efforts to fulfill international commitments made on water and water-related issues by 2015. These commitments include the Millennium Development Goal to reduce the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by half by 2015, and to stop unsustainable exploitation of water resources.

10 Reasons You Should Care About Water - the essence of life

1. Every 15 seconds, a child dies from drinking contaminated water. (Water Partners International, Kansas City, MO)

2. More than 2.2 million people, mostly in developing countries, die each year from diseases associated with poor water and unsanitary conditions. (WHO/UNICEF/WSSCC, 2000: V)

3. Only 1% of the total water resources on earth is available for human use. While 70% of the world's surface is covered by water, 97.5% of that is salt water. Of the remaining 2.5% that is fresh water, almost 68.7% is frozen in ice caps and glaciers. (UN-WWAP, 2006 : Fig. 4.1)

4. Water scarcity already affects every continent and more than 40% of the people on our planet. (http://www.unwater.org/flashindex.html)

5. There are 1.1 billion people, or 18% of the world's population, who lack access to safe drinking water. About 2.6 billion people, or 42% of the total, lack access to basic sanitation. (WHO/UNICEF, 2005 : 40)

6. By 2025, it is estimated that about two thirds of the world's population - about 5.5 billion people - will live in areas facing moderate to severe water stress. (UN, 1997 : 19)

7. The world's population is expected to increase to approximately 7.2 billion people by 2015. Almost 95% of the increase is expected to be in developing regions. (WHO/UNICEF, 2005 : 40)

8. In an industrialized city with plenty of water, flushing the lavatory in an average household can send up to 50 litres (13 gallons) of water down the drain every day. Yet more than one in six people worldwide - 1.1 billion - don't have access to 20-50 litres of safe freshwater daily, the minimum range suggested by the UN to ensure each person's basic needs for drinking, cooking and cleaning. (www.unwater.org)

9. About 90% of sewage and 70% of industrial wastes in developing countries are discharged into water courses without treatment, often polluting the usable water supply.

10. The economic payback from investing US$11.3 billion per year to reach the Millennium targets for drinking water and sanitation by 2015 is estimated to be US$ 84 billion. (WHO, 2004: 34)

Visit here for more water facts:

http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/factsheet.html - from the 'Water for Life' Fact Sheet and other sources.

Let’s Get Involved!

(Source: http://www.unanyc.org/events/water.html)

Weekly Elixir - October 22, 2007

U.S. ShelterBox response team delivers landmark aid
By Janice Chambers
Rotary International News

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What is a Shelterbox?

Shelterbox started as a small project by the Rotary Club of Helston-Lizard, England, in 2001, but it took off quickly. To date, it has raised ₤15 million and delivered aid in 33 countries.

Recently, the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Charles’s wife, Camilla, agreed to serve as president of ShelterBox. She is believed to be the first Royal Patron of a Rotary club project in the United Kingdom.

The ShelterBox project is designed to assist people who suffer through natural disasters.

Each ShelterBox costs about US$1,000 and is intended to help a family of 10 survive for six months. It contains custom supplies that typically include a large tent, blankets, water purification and cooking equipment, basic tools, and a multi-fuel stove. Rotary clubs provide more than half the funding, and private donors contribute the rest.

The Shelterbox that marked 500,000 people helped by the program was delivered to Jagadeo Argairiya, who has a family of 10, including five young children.

On her first trip delivering disaster relief for ShelterBox, Trannie Lacquey encountered Maoist guerillas, crossed swollen rivers on foot, and hiked miles in a remote, tension-filled corner of Nepal.

But the toughest challenge, says the grandmother of five, was clearing customs at the airport for 410 ShelterBox relief kits, which would help hundreds of families trapped by the monsoon floods that swept Nepal in August. It took 10 days.




“It was tedious and very frustrating. We knew people were waiting,” she says.
Fortunately, extensive training at a ShelterBox Response Team training camp in Cornwall, England, paid off, she says. Lacquey and her husband, John, members of the Rotary Club of Branford, Florida, USA, and Gary Boe, a member of the Rotary Club of Lewis River, Washington, USA, were the first U.S. ShelterBox Response Team members sent on a disaster relief mission.

They also made history, as they delivered the ShelterBox that marked 500,000 disaster victims aided by the Rotarian-sponsored nonprofit.

The effort also depends on energetic volunteers like the Lacqueys, who arrived home 1 September after three weeks in Nepal and are now repacking for a weekend in Blackwater River State Park in Florida, where they’ll help train more response team recruits.

They’ll also tell stories from their recent trip. “The rice paddies were still flooded,” John Trannie recalls. “People lost everything. They were living under tarps in the rain. The living conditions were just horrible.” But through it all, he says, “People would help their neighbors. It was a very humbling experience for us.”

Recently, ShelterBox enjoyed another first. It received its first Matching Grant from The Rotary Foundation, allowing 24 boxes to be delivered to northern Ethiopia in October, providing desperately needed shelter for Sudanese refugees. The grant was funded by the Rotary clubs of Beaverton, Oregon, USA, and Bahir Dar, Ethiopia.

It is part of a massive effort by ShelterBox, called A Million in Africa, which intends to provide shelter for one million of Africa’s eight million refugees.

Read more about the ShelterBox Response Team training camp in England in the October issue of The Rotarian.