Stories

An estimated 2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation facilities that hygienically separate human excreta from human contact. Rotarian Alfredo Pérez knows the schools in Guatemala and neighboring countries can use all the help available in this area.

So, when Carlos Flores, then governor of District 4250 (Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras), asked Pérez in 2016 to get involved with the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) in Schools Target Challenge, he quickly accepted. As the name suggests, the pilot program focuses on providing clean water and sanitation systems, and equipping teachers to educate students on better hygiene practices.

“The objective of the project is to develop good hygiene habits in children,” Pérez says. “By reducing absenteeism due to diseases that are acquired due to lack of water, sanitation, and hygiene in schools, we can increase their academic development. Training teachers to help children develop good hygiene habits is key.”

Indeed, more than a year after the effort began, the Rotary Club of Valle de Guatemala, where Pérez is a member, has improved conditions for as many as 1,793 children from 10 schools in the town of Escuintla, about 40 miles south of Guatemala City, the capital. 

Corporación Energías de Guatemala, an energy company, backed the project with a $62,000 grant. Pérez’s club and the Rotary Club of Escuintla worked with local public health officials and urban and rural planners. The project provided toilets, washing stations, and water tanks, and also supported training for teachers so that the facilities would be put to good use.

This year, members of Pérez’s club have a budget of $30,000 for work at five more schools. 

Pérez is giving talks around his country in hopes of recruiting more clubs to take up the challenge in their communities, and he’s seeking international partners to help expand the program.

Educators tell Rotarians that fewer students now miss school because of gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses, which sometimes spread by poor hand washing or lack of safe water.

The first time Noel Jackson jumped out of a plane, it had nothing to do with raising money for polio eradication.

The Michigan dentist had received a gift certificate from members of his staff to go skydiving because they knew he was into adventure.

“It is definitely a defining moment,” says Jackson, a member of the Rotary Club of Trenton, Mich., of that first jump at 14,000 feet, done in tandem strapped to a professional skydiver. “The rush of the free fall is beyond anything I have ever experienced before. Just the speed and acceleration is unbelievable. You don’t even have time to figure out if you are enjoying it or not; it’s just a sensation that happens.”

Jackson did enjoy the sensation, so much so that he agreed to do another jump, with Shiva Koushik, a Rotarian friend in nearby Windsor, Ont. 

The two men were waiting for this second jump when their wives came up with the idea of enlisting other jumpers and raising pledges for polio eradication.

In August 2014, a jump in the skies of northeastern Michigan raised $15,000 for Rotary’s polio eradication campaign. Matched 2-to-1 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the effort contributed $45,000 to the cause.

Since 1985, when Rotary committed to polio eradication, the organization has contributed more than $1.5 billion and countless volunteer hours to immunize children against the disease. In that time, the number of polio cases has dropped 99.9 percent, and only three countries remain where the virus has never been stopped: Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan. While World Polio Day, 24 October, serves as an important opportunity to remind the world of the need to finish the job, raising money and awareness is a year-round effort for many.

Late-night recruiting

Julie Caron, a member of the Rotary Club of Toronto Skyline, heard about plans for the Michigan fundraising skydive after being invited to speak at a leadership training event in Koushik’s district.

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“We were in one of those friendship rooms after the conference … when Koushik began talking about the skydive,” Caron says. “We all got really excited and signed up.

“I don’t like to back out on things I say I’m going to do, even if it’s the middle of the night,” Caron says. So she began raising money and drove down to Michigan to do the jump.

She also took the idea back to her own club, whose members are mostly young professionals looking for fun things to do. This past July, 10 members from Toronto Skyline and surrounding Rotary clubs plunged earthward in their own tandem skydive, raising several thousand dollars for polio eradication. 

Caron hopes to make it a yearly event.

“Polio eradication is definitely something I am passionate about,” she says. “It’s not a hard fundraiser to put together at all. You just call around and pick a place, and then you begin asking people if they would rather jump or pay up in pledges.”

Jackson, who’d jumped out of the plane in his “Captain Rotary” outfit, says he personally raised $4,700 for the Michigan skydive using Caron’s approach recent jump in Michigan raised $45,000 to help end polio.

I would go up to people and tell them we were skydiving for polio and give them two options,” says Jackson. “I would tell them I was paying $180 out of my own pocket to jump, so if you are not going to jump, you have to pay $180. Most people would say, ‘OK, you got it.’ ”

Floating like a bird

Koushik and his wife are active in other ways to rid the world of polio. They have been on several trips with their Rotary district to immunize children in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, and particularly enjoy showing off their native country, India, from which they emigrated to Canada about 30 years ago. They are planning to take part in another National Immunization Day in Pakistan next year.

Still, the skydive will hold a special place in Koushik’s heart.

“This is one of the highlights of my polio eradication efforts,” he says. “It’s such a feeling of freedom. The first time out of the plane, you have very little idea what is happening; you are free-falling so fast. But once that parachute opens, you look around and say, ‘Wow!’ It’s such a great feeling to be able to float like a bird.”

While visiting the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre on the island of Borneo in Malaysia three years ago, New Zealand Rotarian Debbie Mair fell in love with a couple of fuzzy orphaned pygmy elephants, the smallest subspecies of elephant.

Mair says the orphans’ parents had wandered onto palm plantations in search of food and were killed. Indonesia and Malaysia are the world’s largest producers of palm oil, a common ingredient in food and household items. Deforestation to make room for plantations has greatly reduced food sources for pygmy elephants, along with rhinos, sun bears, orangutans, and tigers. Poachers also target the animals. 

“I felt we had to do something,” says Mair, a member of the Rotary Club of Hutt City. She bought as much milk powder locally as she could to feed the elephants, which need up to 50 gallons of milk daily to survive. Since then several more orphaned elephants have arrived, all hand-fed by staff who add vitamins, coconut oil, and minerals to the powder.

Mair, an executive officer of the Rotarian Action Group for Endangered Species, has built partnerships with the Sabah Wildlife Department; the Rotary Club of Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia; and Fonterra New Zealand, one of the world’s largest exporters of dairy products, which supplies the milk powder for the elephants at a discount. The rescue center also receives funding from Rotary clubs where Mair and other action group members give talks. 

Last year Mair attended a conference that brought together plantation owners, scientists, and wildlife advocates, and sat down with owners to hear their concerns and work toward solutions. As a Rotarian, she says, she was viewed as an impartial observer. Today, she says, the palm plantation managers are increasingly calling wildlife rescue units when elephants are discovered on their land or when they find injured animals.  

“I don’t want future generations to only see these wild animals on video,” says Mair.

– Anne Stein

ROTARY ROAD TRIPS

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Your assignment is to complete four Rotary Road Trips during the Rotary year.  A qualifying Road trip includes four (4) members of the visiting club.

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