Mr ONDARCHIE (Northern Metropolitan) (10:11):
As members know, I have a profound love of two countries on this globe: this country of Australia and the one of my heritage, Sri Lanka. I am pleased to congratulate, therefore, the Rotary club for their work on what is called the Rotary Overseas Recycled Playgrounds project. It all started with the Rotary Club of Flemington Kensington in my electorate of Northern Metropolitan Region, which has been fantastic in finding playgrounds that are being dismantled by municipalities or schools, recycling them, cleaning them up, refitting them and then putting them in containers and transporting them over to Sri Lanka, where the kids can have some playgrounds.
As members know, I have a profound love of two countries on this globe: this country of Australia and the one of my heritage, Sri Lanka. I am pleased to congratulate, therefore, the Rotary club for their work on what is called the Rotary Overseas Recycled Playgrounds project. It all started with the Rotary Club of Flemington Kensington in my electorate of Northern Metropolitan Region, which has been fantastic in finding playgrounds that are being dismantled by municipalities or schools, recycling them, cleaning them up, refitting them and then putting them in containers and transporting them over to Sri Lanka, where the kids can have some playgrounds.
The founder of this program is Peter Cribb from the Rotary Club of Flemington Kensington, a very inspiring man and a man that I pay tribute to for his work.
What they do is take these local playgrounds that were destined for landfill and send them overseas to needy kids. It all started with a playground from Leopold in Geelong, where Flemington Rotary club and Highton Rotary Club got together, cleaned it all up, fixed it all up and sent it over to Sri Lanka, and it is now in Kurunegala in Sri Lanka at a girls home. This program has grown to involve over 50 Rotary clubs across Victoria, and they are donating playgrounds to Tanzania, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and hopefully soon to Nepal and Bhutan as well. Today I say congratulations to Flemington Kensington Rotary Club and to all the Rotary clubs for the Rotary Overseas Recycled Playgrounds program.