RI District 3420 Indonesia
Meeting Place: Losari Metro Hotel
Time: Saturdays at 3pm
Website: http://rotaryujungpandang.org
It all started in October 1996, when the board of freshly chartered RCBJ expressed a desire to connect with, and contribute to the Bugis community at Makassar, the capital of the Bugis nation in South Sulawesi, as in centuries past the Bugis sailors had played a part in the early history of Singapore as a centre of International Trade. The large Bugis sailing fleet is the only commercial sailing fleet in the world today.
The board agreed to give scholarships to Bugis Vocational School students at Makassar and that project resulted in contact with members of RC Ujung Pandang. The meeting with RCUPG resulted in a spirit of joint cooperation to work together on projects. Then RCUPG worked with RCBJ in 1997 with handling the distribution of our donation of $1,400 to the victims of a catastrophic earthquake in South Sulawesi. President Moss Pellen and PP Sel McVean visited RCUPG and were taken to see where the funds had been spent.
While discussing projects with President Imam Mudjari and his team at RCUPG, financial problems of needy final-year university students was discussed, as there were many high-performance students unable to graduate and take their place as professionals in the community. So the SponSiswa Project was initiated, and since has seen more than 200 students graduate as Doctors, Dentists, Teachers, Engineers, and Journalists, all with the help of Rotarians and their friends in RCBJ.
During Rotary Year 1999-2000 President Chew Ghim Bok took a delegation from RCBJ to a Rotary Conference at Bali and during that conference an "Agreement to Foster Bonds of Friendship and Cooperation" was signed bonding RCUPG as a Sister Club with RCBJ.
Since RCUPG became a Sister Club, more than 20 joint projects have been completed including seven SponSiswa, two SponJuru, CompuSiswa, HOPE (200 cleft-lip and 20 Cataract procedures), and more recently "Pondok Baca" (a library for village children), at Bontoala some 40km from Makassar.
Rotary Club of Ujung Pandang has been a trusted, hardworking and successful Sister Club for Rotary Club of Bugis Junction for 15 years.