Maketu Rotary puts in 706 volunteer hours in major community project
Rotarians aren’t typically very good bookkeepers when it comes to keeping track of their volunteer hours. However, when Maketu Rotary embarked on a project to completely renovate the Maketu Community Centre, every volunteer hour was documented simply because their Health and Safety Plan, under building consent rules, required every volunteer to sign in/out each time they entered the worksite.
So, when the club wrapped up this six-month project, the time sheets revealed a whopping 706 hours of volunteer service by Maketu Rotarians and friends of the club. And, that doesn’t include several hours of off-site volunteer work on the project.
Under the leadership of Maketu Rotarian, David Campbell, the club took a 4 bedroom/1 bath 80s vintage house, gutted it, and turned it into a single multipurpose room, with a new kitchen, fibre, wifi and audio-visual setup, new furnishings, and a disability accessible toilet. This $76,000 project was funded primarily by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, supplemented by funding from Maketu Rotary, The Acorn Foundation, and a D9930 Rotary Foundation District Grant.
In addition to the massive Rotary volunteer effort, tradespersons were employed to carry out licensed work where required by building codes.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this video must be worth 706,000 words. Sit back and enjoy: “700 Volunteer Hours in 70 Seconds”