Why Donate Now

Posted by Bill Paul & Jeffrey Weigel 
 
Regular visitors to the District 5280 website will notice a new feature on the home page.  To your left is a Donate Now button.  It is just above the calendar.  The button links to the RI District 5280 Charitable Foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt foundation. Created through PayPal, the mechanism allows users to donate funds to rebuilding the island of Taveuni.
 
 
 
Part of the island nation of Fiji, Taveuni, the third largest of more than 100 inhabited islands, was hit by Cyclone Winston on Feb 25, 2016.  The eye of the most powerful cyclone ever recorded in the South Pacific history crossed the south of Taveuni Island.  Winds exceeding 200 mph (that's equal to 325kph)  wreaked  havoc, devastating the island and much of the nation. On Taveuni, an estimated 80% to 90% of the houses were destroyed, half of the car ferry jetty was washed away, communications were knocked down, water and power supply was knocked out, businesses and farms flattened and more.
 
So why did we create this feature for a disaster that occurred half way around the world?  The answer is simple: five Rotary clubs of District 5280, and two Rotary clubs elsewhere in California, are partnering in a multi-year Global Grant project on Taveuni. But our interest and involvement with Taveuni goes beyond the Global Grant project! 
 

The Redondo Beach Rotary Club has a ten-year working relationship with the Rotary Club of Taveuni Island.  For the past decade we've supported Rotarians and Fijians on pre-school education, scabies reduction and school computerization on Taveuni. This remote rural 27 mile long, 7mile-wide island, with a 4,000 ft. peak in its center, is an hour flight north from Fiji’s capital.  Twelve thousand friendly Fijians call this garden island home. Cyclone Winston created an immediate need that we want to respond to, hence the Donate Now feature.
 

Regarding the Global Grant project several Rotary clubs are already in partnership with the Taveuni Rotary Club and RI District 9920 in Auckland, New Zealand.  Led by the Rotary Club of Redondo Beach and with the assistance of LA-5, Downtown Los Angeles, Manhattan Beach, South Bay Sunrise, the Rotary Club of Sierra Madre in District 5300, and the West Calaveras Rotary Club in District 5220 near Reno, we are in the midst of a multi-year Rotary International Global Grant Water and Sanitation Upgrade Program there.  WASUP is a three-year vocational training program to initiate a broad community movement to improve water quality across all of Taveuni – an island where 85 schools and communities provide for their own water and sanitation. 
 
At the completion of WASUP ninety Fijian clean water apprentices will have built clean water installations in a third of these 85 communities or schools.  In doing so community leaders will have developed an understanding the techniques and approaches that can provide clean water island wide.  The way water is provided and disposed of on the island will have changed forever.

In the meantime, we are working to rebuild Taveuni from the ravages of Cyclone Winston.  Join us by Donating Now!