International Projects

International

The Cambodia & Laos Literacy Project

The Kavet people of northeastern Cambodia are among the larger Kavet/Brao language group (total 60,000) who populate two provinces of Cambodia, and the two southernmost provinces of the neighboring Lao PDR, with the population about evenly split between Laos and Cambodia.  The Kavet people are among the most disadvantaged in Camboida.  They live in scattered hamlets far from the government schools, and most have not had the opportunity to attend school.  The Kavet are pre-literate, i.e. their language has only recently been reduced to writing. They have no prior tradition of education - this is the first generation in the history of their people to learn to read and write in any language. 

The Literacy Project will:

a) Support community literacy classes for indigenous youth and adult learners in Kavet villages.

b) Provide training to volunteer literacy teachers, to improve their skills in order to teach the classes.

c) Strengthen and expand the use of the newly written Kavet language and produce Kavet materials for teaching; and

d) Provide bilingual learning and library materials to indigenous communities.

 

 
 

Bolivia Water Project

After many months of waiting, the municipality finally was ready to pay its share and Etta Projects was able to begin installation of the water project for San Miguel Rincon.  In May the plumbers entered the community to begin laying out the system.  Materials have been purchased; pipes, polytubes, meters and faucets, as well as accessories to connect the matrix network at the time of installation. The plumbers have begun installing distribution system and are approximately 2/3 complete.
Workshops with the communities are under way. Also the water committee has been elected and training for their role in management of this water system has started.
Once the children return from a school break the hygiene education workshops will begin.
The system should be completed by the second week of August and the whole project is anticipated to be done by the first of October 2018 with 50 families connected to clean water and all community, committees, and school trainings complete.
Note:  The Etta Foundation is named in honor of an American Rotary Exchange student who lost her life in Bolivia as a passenger on a bus that tumbled off one of the world’s most dangerous roads.
 
 

Bottle Schools

A town in northwest Guatemala is undergoing a transformation.  It has a thriving school, but a serious shortage of usable secure classrooms.  It also had a common third world problem - growing mounds of plastic litter.  That town is Xesuj.  Our club has contributed to its metamorphosis.
 
Under the direction of the Hugs It Forward organization, the town children spent months gathering discarded plastic bottles and other plastic litter from the town and its surroundings.
Townspeople, primarily the women, spent many hours stuffing litter into the bottles.  In the meantime, village men were taught basic construction skills while erecting the reinforced concrete framework of a new school building. Everyone worked together to carefully arrange the bottles between wire mesh barriers, providing the core of inexpensive insulating walls. After two coats of cement plaster and paint, the installation of the roof, a new and secure school house is finished.
 

Hug It Forward is a multicultural organization operating at the grassroots level in the region of Latin America, with an emphasis in Guatemala.

They facilitate education and awareness around improved trash management methods via the construction of bottle classrooms. Bottle classrooms are constructed using eco-bricks, which are plastic bottles stuffed with inorganic trash. During the project process, entire communities come together to build a more environmentally responsible educational space for their future.

To learn more about Hug It Forward, visit their website:  https://hugitforward.org/
 
 

Rotary's Fight to End Polio

Since 1985 Rotary has led the battle against polio, and kept the pressure on as worldwide cases plummeted from 350,000 per year to several hundred. When India went off the list of endemic countries in 2012, we took one more step toward eradicating a human disease from the earth for only the second time in history. Now, Rotary and its partners are This Close to making that dream a reality. . 
 

What is Polio?

 
Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a paralyzing and potentially deadly infectious disease that most commonly affects children under the age of 5. The virus spreads from person to person, typically through contaminated water. It can then attack the nervous system.
 
 
 

Our Goal.

Rotary has been working to eradicate polio for more than 30 years. Our goal of ridding the world of this disease is closer than ever.

As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, we've reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent since our first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979.

We've helped immunize more than 2.5 billion children in 122 countries. So far, Rotary has contributed more than $1.8 billion toward eradicating the disease worldwide.

Today, polio remains endemic only in Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan. But it’s crucial to continue working to keep other countries polio-free. If all eradication efforts stopped today, within 10 years, polio could paralyze as many as 200,000 children each year.

 
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