Posts
Since 2008, the Springfield, Ohio,
Rotary Club has propelled local pledges of $60,000 into $224,000 for helping
AIDS-infected orphans in Lesotho, Africa, pursue a better life. Rotarian
members thought the club should live up to its name, “Rotary International,”
and get involved in a global project. The group searched for ideas and learned
of Wittenberg University Professor Scott Rosenberg’s annual trips with students
to Lesotho. The group discovered that Lesotho had extensive poverty problems
and high numbers of AIDS orphans. Rosenberg, a club advisor, now claims that
the international project is “on a scale I could only dream about.”
With support from the late Hans
Berkle, Rotary District 6670’s then-governor, the Springfield club’s efforts
magnified. At a breakfast, Berkle initially promised $15,000 in matching funds,
then $25,000, and eventually $75,000 in district funds, leading the Springfield
club to obtain Rotary Foundation grants. Their first effort proposed a 56-child
dormitory in an established orphanage in Motsekuoa village, where they replaced
outhouses with showers and modern bathrooms. They also renovated an existing
dormitory that housed 142 children. The orphanage project expanded to meet the
spiraling number of HIV crisis orphans. The orphanage combined HIV and non-HIV
orphans, reducing the stigma accompanying HIV isolation. The project added a
health clinic.
The Rotary project has spawned other
collaborations. Rotary International and the Maseru Rotary Club in Lesotho’s
capital city created Kick4Life, an AIDS awareness program built around soccer,
as well as a hospitality training project in which the orphans learned the
business by working at bed-and-breakfasts. The project developed a successful relationship
with Sister Gisele, a Canadian nun, who operated a girls’ school and a homeless
and seniors housing program in Maseru. Ohio’s Clark County teens have joined
Interact Club, Rotary’s club for high school students, for which they collected
and packed clothing and books for shipping to remote mountain villages in
Lesotho. Interact Club also helped Maseru High School students form their own
Interact Club, a club that is now raising pigs, rabbits, and chickens to feed
the orphans. The Interact Club held a fundraiser that paid for orphans’
blankets at a Motsekuoa school. More projects are in the works.
Commenting on Springfield’s Interact
Club, Rosenberg noted the benefits for the city’s next generation’s involvement
in helping others, and declared, “You never know how this kind of exposure at
17, 18, changes your life.”
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is
dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and
empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV
virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!
