Supporting the local community

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 service seriously. We always strive to give back to the area in which we work and live. Our club has engaged in the following activities:

• weekly raffle for many years at the Savoy Hotel to raise funds for numerous charities
• the Rotary Dorset Bike Ride in aid of Cancer Research UK 
• annual Christmas lunch for senior citizens
• annual trip for underprivileged children to local attraction (part of Rotary's "Kids Day Out")
• afternoon tea fundraisers for End Polio Now
• Rotary Young Chef competition
• Summer Fete at the Savoy Hotel, Bournemouth
• health awareness promotion (part of Rotary's "Stroke Awareness Day")
• Taking part in the Rotary Christmas Shoebox appeal with the help of two local schools.
• BBQ for volunteers at Cherry Tree Nursery
• Santa's grotto in Westbourne and Boscombe. as well as Santa's float in Southbourne
• ​And much more - including our Dragon's Den Initiative     This was ​set up to identify small community groups needing funding assistance - where presentations are given to the club in a Dragons Den style for £500 funding, or share of it - being decided by club member vote.

We also present an annual Young Achiever Award to a pupil at our local primary school (St Michael's), recognising and rewarding the talent of the future of our town, nor for their academic prowess, but their good citizenship and caring for others - or their 'Service Above Self'.
During the Covid-19 crisis, Westbourne Rotary have continued to support the local community in various ways via food projects and helping For the Love of Scrubs – East Dorset
We have helped For the Love of Scrubs-East Dorset with logistical planning, as well as collecting donations of bedding fabrics, co-ordinating volunteer drivers for collections and deliveries weekly to their volunteer sewists and delivering completed scrubs, masks , hats and bags to frontline workers.
Food Related projects
Re-packaging of donated food items from one of our business partners, Harvest Fine Foods,  for use by Bournemouth Food Bank.  Over the years we have donated thousands of pounds worth of food items and will be continuing this as an ongoing project.
 
We have been providing 70 packed lunches each week for St Lukes Church in Winton for group of rough sleepers that have been accommodated in their area.
 
We have supplied daily evening meals to homeless that had been re-housed in a local hotel without access to cooking facilities and as the requirement for supply of meals for homeless reduced, we continued supplying meals to group of Assylum seekers to enable they had access to daily meals.
 
We organised a weekly supply of vegetable and fruit packages for St Lukes Church for families that have been accommodated following incidents of domestic abuse but had access to limited cooking facilities.
 
Other Covid related actions
Supplying facemasks made by For the Love of Scrubs to businesses and schools in the Westbourne area as shops start re-opening for business and pupils return to classes.
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Charity Projects

International Updates

Two 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:

1. Provide 2 new water tanks for Misira
2. Remove old water tank and give to Jafai Kuta for an animal drinking trough
3. Provide new metal fencing posts and fencing for the vegetable garden at Misira
4. Help Jafai Kuta to establish a new vegetable garden and provide fencing to surround it.
5. Provide fencing to the rear perimeter of the clinic in Sambel KUnda to join up the 3 walls built in 2009.

With this fund raising figure in mind, they set up a Just Giving Crowd Funding page to raise the necessary funds and raised £2653.00 and then returned in March 2020 to carry out as much of the work as possible whilst in The Gambia, with the help of the villagers and staff of the Gambia Horse & Donkey Trust.  Help of seed donations also came from Cherry Tree Nursery and Bournemouth in Bloom which enabled a donation of a quantity of seeds to give to the 3 villages to help their gardens.
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.

Global Projects

Rotary is an international organisation and also the largest Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) in the world. Each club has a role to play to make the worldwide community a better place to live.  To support global projects, our club has:

• bought and filled numerous Aquaboxes
• sent Shelterboxes for use in overseas disaster areas
• sent Christmas presents directly to Romania in shoeboxes
• supported the education of two children in Thailand via Plan International
• supported the education of 10 children in The Gambia via Stella's School Scheme
• supported several international ambassadorial scholars
• raised funds for the Royal National Institute for the Blind (one of our members cycled across India)
• organised a Classics on the Pier concert featuring two internationally-renowned musicians
• held a tribute show at the Pavilion featuring several well known tribute acts

Four members of our club took part in the Rotaract Overseas Project Team to The Gambia, West Africa, in January 2009. The project included digging a borehole and installing a water tower and standpipes, so that a remote village had access to clean drinking water. They also constructed a washhouse for the same village. The team also built a toilet block as well as a wall and gates at a clinic in another village.

More news of our latest projects in The Gambia can be found on the left and an update on the Sri Lanka project is below.
We have started a project with the Rotary Club of Batticaloa Heritage in Sri Lanka to build facilities for the disposal of sanitary products for girls at 25 schools. The objective is to build 2 of the disposal bins at each of the schools, so a total of 50 units.

So far, we have trialed the implementation at 6 schools in the main town of Batticaloa and this will be followed by the roll-out to the surrounding towns and villages in the coming months, once we have some feedback on the initial units and assessed if any improvements or design modifications are required.

The main aim is to enable and encourage female students to attend school during their periods, so that they do not have interruptions to their education.

The project also encompasses training sessions for staff and students in menstrual hygiene, as well as the use and maintenance of the units.

The project has also been financially supported by the Rotary Club of Toronto.