Steyning and Henfield Rotary Club - Collections for International Disasters

You may have seen us in the town centre with our Rotary tabards on, collecting funds for international disasters, and wondered where the funds are going.

Well, for people made homeless when a disaster occurs, and whose essential services are disrupted, the overwhelming short term needs are for shelter and clean water, and this is where we concentrate our efforts.

Hundreds of standard kits are stored so that when a disaster occurs they can be dispatched to the region affected as soon as transport can be arranged, preferably the same day. We use the money we collect to pay for those kits so that stocks can be replenished ready for the next inevitable disaster.

Of course we can’t do this ourselves, in Steyning and Henfield, but there are members of Rotary clubs in the UK that have taken it upon themselves to organize national schemes – and they really do deserve our admiration.

ShelterBox: www.shelterbox.org  is one such scheme from Helston in Cornwall. Each large, green ShelterBox typically contains a tent for an extended family, blankets, water storage and purification equipment, cooking utensils, a stove, a basic tool kit, a children’s activity pack and other vital items. You can imagine the needs being different for cold, mountainous regions and tropical or desert areas, and for floods and earthquakes, so boxes are tailored to each specific disaster.

The Water-Survival Box: www.worldwaterworks.org is a similar scheme that focuses on clean water and cooking equipment, as is Lifeboxwww.disasteraiduk.com.

Our aim, when a serious disaster occurs, is to send funds for two boxes - typically they cost around £500 each - and Steyning and Henfield Rotary is eternally grateful for your support, both at our street collections and generally at our other events throughout the year, to enable us to do this.

And because it is Rotary, almost all of the work is done by volunteers, and you can rest assured that the none of money raised is spent on unnecessary infrastructure or administration.

You could join Rotary and make a world of difference or, if you like what we do and would like to help out but feel you can’t make the commitment to full membership, you could join our new Friends of Rotary scheme.

Email - info@steyningandhenfieldrotary.co.uk
Telephone - call Peter Johnson on 07714 093406

You can find us also at:
Website: www.steyningandhenfieldrotary.co.uk
Blog: http://steyningandhenfieldrotary.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @SteyningRotary
Facebook: Steyning-and-Henfield-Rotary

Some dates to look out for: December - collections with Father Christmas round the streets of Steyning; 19th  December – annual Carol Service at Lancing College; 3rd  March – Raced Night at the Steyning Centre for the Steyning Area First Responders.

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