Container To East Timor

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SI Helena with the support of SI Riverside, SI Geraldton and SI Karratha & Districts have been successful in our efforts to fund the first stage of our sustainable farming project in Timor. SI Joondalup having visited our project in 2010 informed us of a shipping container that would have some room for us to send much needed items to assist the farm and community.

David Roach from Catalpa International our partnering NGO in Timor provided us with a list of supplies that the farming project and community needed. At the last Region meeting details of the offer of space in the shipping container and a list of supplies was provided to delegates and proxies and our member Kim Kennedy spoke about how clubs could assist by collecting the items and delivering to her home until we were able to take them to the temporary storage container in Victoria Park.

There was a large variey of items delivered to Kim’s home including bags and bags of new warm clothes which included jackets, pants, long sleave T shirts, caps, rolls and rolls of beautiful material for sewing, wool, buttons, craft items, books, pencils, gardening tools and cooking utensils to name but a few. Once the call came through that the container was ready we jumped into action packaging, lableling and delivering everything in an afternoon, a big job on a hot day!

A very, very big thank you to all those clubs who assisted, to SI Joondalup for thinking of our project when they knew the offer of space was available and to Peter Snell who liased with us and assisted in packaging the boxes into the container.

The container is listed as a Rotary Australia World Community Service (RAWCS) Project which will provide tax receipts for cash donations into the project. Rotary will be planning several fundraisers this year to help keep the containers moving regularly. Note that the cost to send one container is aprox $8000.