For some, sitting down to that special meal on Christmas day is beyond reach.  So, the Rotary Club of Warrnambool challenged all 4 Rotary Clubs to donate the Christmas luxuries that many of us take for granted.  The result is just on a half a tonne of Christmas related foodstuffs to the Warrnambool and District Foodshare.

 

The Rotary Club of Warrnambool East won the inaugural event, with our club running a gallant 2nd a mere 20Kgs behind.  Despite running 2nd, our club is very happy with the efforts of all clubs who participated, with those less fortunate being the big winners.

 

Letter of Appeal

 

Project: Provission of Clean Water. 50 Pumps For 50 Villages.

 

I am Elijah Sarigari Chairman of the Oro Coomunity Services Foundation from Oro Province in Papua New Guinea. We are not a properly registerd group as we do not have enough resources to do these things. We are concerned people who try to help our communitys have better lives. We have been working with Roatry for many years and have a strong relationship.

 

Oro Province is rated high as a natural disaster prone area in PNG. The province experiences cyclone, volcanoe, droughts, king tides and terestal flooding every year. As these happens, most water sources are badly affected and many people mostly women and children and people with special needs suffere badly from not having clean water. The already poorly estabilished government and church run facilities can not cope with the growing needs for clean water in most communities.

 

The water born diseases are common in PNG and people of Oro in particular have lived with this delima for centuries. Many children and women live in fear of eaten by crocoddiles in an attempt to get water from the rivers. They get bad water from open creeks, swampy and still waters in the water logged areas. Pregnent mothers, young children, ageing and people with special needs are most vulnerable and disadvantaged by walking long distances carrying water.

 

Provissions of aceesable clean water is a big issues. Here in Oro we are trying to addressing this. A few locals have initiated the project many years ago by contacted a Australian Rotary Club and a team of Rotary Volunteers have come and helped one community (Sariri Village community). This Roatry group has now better organised and stronger and spread the services to many communities. Roatry team lives and works with us when they are here and has taught us many things and we can now do many things we did not know before. We are working with them to find clean water in remote villages for 50 pumps for 50 villages. We hope to partner with other stake holders, Government line agencies, NGOs and charity groups such as Rotary clubs to provide accesable and clean waters to more people.

 

Together with the team of local and Rotary volunteers who have given their lives to travel to very remote villages Sariri, Kongoho, Embogo, Embessa, Karaisa, Emo, Foru, Sarawassa, Bobo, Oro fishing community and have already put down 11 bores 4 wells in villages and filtration system in a school. From this we have given clean water to thousands of villagers for the first time. Rotry has provided us with money tools equpments and pumps with no cost. All these were done by Roatry and us work together with very basic hand held boring equipment. There has been a lot of challenges trying to do the job properly with very basic equipment. It is very hard work. The soil in this region is mainly rocky sand in the hinterland and mostly deep muddy soil in the swampy and water log areas especially villages along the sea line. We can not dig deep enough to get a lot of water with our hand digging methods. With the better stronger equipment we can dig faster and go futher down and get more good water.

 

In our effort to provide water to one of our urban Schools (Popondetta Secondary School) the current project we dug with our hand tools for 2 weeks but we encountered a problem with our well is not deep enough although we have dug down 13 meters. Therefore we urgently need better equipment to do the job properly and served the communities so we kindly appeal for better equipments for digging for water.

 

Rotary has helped us with many things. We have tools for digging for water and they give us many things for schools communities and our hospital. Rotary has bought us shipping containers where we keep the equipments and we care for them until Rotarians come to help us each year. If we have better equipments we will keep them safe and look after them with great care.

 

We appreciate the tremdous effort from Warrnambool and Geelong and supporting Rotry Clubs for this noble and life helping project. Together we make a difference in a community in this part of the world.

 

We have strong local volunteers here who will do more work if only we are properly enpowered with resoucers. We want to help our people to live like others can in the world and drink clean water and die when thay get old not die from water born disease.

 

I and my people ask you can you please help our Rotry friends who try so hard to help us help ourselves.

 

Elijah Sarigari Chairman Oro Community Service Foundation.