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Helping the local community is one of the primary roles of Rotary and you may have seen Rotarians at work supporting communities without even realising it. At the Rotary Club of Westbourne, we take our community and international service seriously, and whilst striving to give back to the area in which we work and live, are also mindful of the internationality of Rotary and our international communities too. Since the club was chartered in 1995, it has carried out many and varied activities and constantly add new projects and initiatives as they arise. For example, we recently became aware of families struggling with internet access for home studying during latest Covid lockdown and launched a project to help families - MAKE A DIFFERENCE - GIVE A LAPTOP MAKE A DIFFERENCE – GIVE A LAPTOP When we heard that a startling number of families, students and young children were struggling with studies due to not having adequate access to a computer, we decided that we wanted to help to make a difference to families in our area – so Westbourne Rotary put out a call to businesses and local residents to donate any spare, or unwanted laptops, to try to make sure that no pupil goes without access to a laptop for their studies. Donated laptops will be sent to be electronically cleaned before onward donation to recipients. If YOU live in the Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch area and have a laptop you would like to donate – all you need to do is contact us by email at info@westbournerotary.org.uk and your details will be passed on to HASH CHANDEGRA, one of our members, who will contact you to arrange local collection directly from you, or advise you of a Bournemouth delivery address for you to drop off at the collection point. WHAT HAPPENS TO DONATED LAPTOPS? The original hard drive is first removed from the laptop - many years worth of data can be recovered, and so to protect sensitive information from prying eyes, BITS in Bournemouth, "zero" over the data so it can never be accessed or recovered again. They then test the hard drive extensively to make sure it is healthy, and will end up working for many more years without failure. If they find a hard drive that is faulty or likely to fail soon, they then replace it for free with a refurbished hard drive that is known to be in good condition. Next they install a fresh operating system, and if required, some free productivity apps such as LibreOffice - they believe everyone should have access to the internet and be able to do their school work. They then pass the device to another technician for one final health check to make sure it works as it should without any crashes, or overheating and so on. Many older laptops also tend to need an internal valet to clear out years worth of dust and grime, before the laptop is passed back to donate to its new owner. We thank BITS for their assistance in clearing, clearing and giving donated laptops the necessary health check. MAKE A DIFFERENCE & DONATE A LAPTOP TODAY & HELP A YOUNG PERSON STUDY….. We always strive to give back to the area in which we live and work and over the years have carried out many projects engaging with the community in the following ways:
- annual Christmas lunches for senior citizens - annual trip for underprivileged children as part of Rotary Kids Out Days - Rotary Young Chef Competitions - Bag packing at The Range for donations i.e. Children in Need - BBQ for Cherry Tree Nurseries Open Days - Santas Grottos in Boscombe and Westbourne - Santa Express Street Collection fund raisers in local area - Young Achievers Award for children at St Michaels School - Rotary Christmas Shoebox Collections - Dragons Den style initiative to help fund local small community groups - Litter picking Westbourne community area. - Setting up community garden in West Hill Area - Clearing and re-planting Skerryvore Garden in Westbourne - Planting thousands of purple crocus bulbs on the West Cliff - Food Related projects, including: - Re-packaging donated foods from business partner, Harvest Fine Foods, for use by Bournemouth Food Bank. - Supplying and delivery 2 course daily meals for local families in need. - facilitating supplies of good to St Lukes church to provide local families with fruit and vegetables hampers. - providing Christmas hampers to a group of Bournemouth Care Leavers And much, much more or as our club motto says......... Making Dreams Real Within Communities |
Charity ProjectsOver the years, the Rotary Club of Westbourne has raised thousands of pounds for charities, both in the local community and worldwide, including:
The Rotary Club of Westbourne has an associated registered charity (Rotary Club of Westbourne Trust Fund, charity number 1111184), so that anyone making a donation can find out more about us. 
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International UpdatesTwo members of the club and their two friends returned from The Gambia on one of the last flights out of the country as the coronavirus pandemic escalated and have the following news on the latest project there.
in February 2019, Richard, Sue, and their friends, Martin and Gill had all been inspired to carry out work in 3 villages, providing they could raise the funds to pay for it – and the estimated total was £2,500 to:
However, upon arrival at Sambel Kunda, it was realised that just putting a fence along one of the perimeters of the clinic was not going to help, as following a recent storm, two of the walls were substantially damaged. So a lot of calculations were done, and a mason and his team employed to re-build the wall and make more bricks to complete it before Richard and Martin got stuck in to install the remaining fencing. Delighted to say all the work was achieved and all returned back safely to the UK a few days earlier than originally planned. |
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