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disaster relief
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BEN ARANDA
DISASTER RELIEF CHAIR
Rotary Club of Historic Filipinotown
From hurricanes to flooding, earthquakes to landslides, volcano eruption, brush fires to fire tornado this past couple of years District 5280 Rotary Clubs seen some deadly natural disasters. What can be done to combat these catastrophes in the future? That is the question to our fellow Rotarians.
Last Rotary year under at the helm of Guity Javid as the Disaster Relief (DR) Chairperson and the committee members, Stephanie Stegall, Wilson Benitez and Ben Aranda, we were inundated with calls and questions on how we can help. As Rotarians it come second nature to most of us to jump into action.
During the last 2017-18 and moving forward into this year, the committee has been able to raise $14,220 through the kindness and generosity of some clubs. These funds were utilized for the benefit of the following projects:
City of Bahia de Caraques Project in Ecuador
Financial support $12,000
The project was to help part of over 1M displaced inhabitant during the Ecuador Earthquake victims in cooperation with the Ecuador Rotary District 4400, joining forces in a $250,000+ project to build 46+ low cost two story houses for the victims of the earthquake valued at $2,900 per home. Without deviating away from the cause, with many months of communication with the Rotary club’s representative in Ecuador and doing due diligence, it was decided together with other Rotary Clubs in D4400, private institutions / NGO from Ecuador and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manabi (spearheaded by a priest, Fr. Bruno Roque), who led a movement of social nature, to help resettle all these poor families. These concerted effort, resulted to a purchase of a large parcel of land, with the help of architects and engineers, designs and plans were made. The organizers proceeded to obtain the construction permits, selected families and assigned each one of them, their lot of land. With that a new community was established named LOS JARDINES. The land was paid by the Archdioceses of Manabi for $70,000. The Rotary Club of Bahia de Caraques cooperated with an endowment of drinking water and invested $6,800. District 5280 DR donated $12,000 primarily to build retaining walls and drainage to protect the new structures from future calamities.
Volcan de Fuego Eruption in Guatemala
$1000 donation channeled to Guatemala D4250 to provide financial assistance for the victims
The D5280 Disaster Relief Committee efforts continue as we are faced with new calamites every day. There are links in the district website to help ongoing efforts to contain firestorms to our neighbors in the north of California.
In line with the goals set by the DR committee, continuous donations going into the disaster relief fund are for the purpose of making a timely impact on future disasters. This fund will be kept at the district level and only used for disaster relief projects.
Once again, on behalf of DR we sincerely thank the clubs that helped raise much-needed funds for disaster relief efforts: Beverly Hills, Culver City, Downtown, LA5, Santa Monica, South Bay Sunrise, Thai Town, Torrance Del Amo, and Westwood Village.
Let’s continue to keeping the Rotary spirit alive, and always believing in Service beyond boundaries and “Be the Inspiration”.