Since visiting Rivne last September, the Rotary Clubs of Alliston and Rivne have been working hard to develop and now implement a global grant to help visually impaired people in Rivne. The grant is complicated and has many parts but it can be simplified into two parts:
- Educatiom materials and support of education of blind and visually impaired students.
- Job creation for visually impaired adults.
Three hardy Rotarians, Dave Green, Bill Wray and Roger Hayward make up this years team. We are in Rivne, Ukraine to audit the accomplishments of the global grant and talk with the Rivne Rotarians about their experience in implementing the grant and how they might move forward.
Day 1: After a 4 hour drive we arrived in Rivne from Lviv.
We were met by Ohla had lunch and were soon beginning our audit. The first visit was to the Rivne Association of Blind facility.
The facility provides work and homes for visually impaired adults. We were greeted by Igor and Igor two of the site administrators. The project at this site has two parts:
- Updating the sewing workshop
- Establishing a paper roll workshop
Sewing workshop update is nearly complete. Updates include:
- 3 new sewing machines
- embroidery machine
- new lightening at all the work stations
- roof repair
- painting and electrical re-wiring
- Fabric cutter
The work on the paper roll workshop is just starting with pouring of the floor.
