International Service encompasses efforts to expand Rotary’s humanitarian reach around the world and to promote world understanding and peace. It includes everything from contributing to PolioPlus to helping Rotary Youth Exchange students adjust to their host countries.
Lesotho Promise
One of our 2009-10 International projects was a collaboration with other local non-profit groups and rotary clubs to help a community of orphans in Lesotho, Africa. Here is a recent report on the progress that has been made.
We did it! The water storage tank at the Orphan Garden is up and running!
The 39 AIDS orphans of the village of Likiting no longer have to lug water a mile up the mountainside to keep their crops alive during the dry summer months. Now, because of the water tank the children will have a plentifulvegetable garden, full of the crops necessary to stave off their hunger. The orphans spent most of a year gathering and hauling the stones to be used in building the tank. The Orphan Garden Project provided the 5,200 Rand (approx. $750) needed to make the system a reality when we visited in September. Villagers actually built the tank by hand with the guidance of the Ministry of Agriculture.
There is a gravity fed pipe that attaches to a small spring at the base of the mountain and carries the water further down the mountainside to the tank at the garden’s edge. It was truly a community project. The villagers are subsistence farmers and together they tend this extra garden so that the orphans survive and can stay in their community rather than being sent away to far off orphanages. They are such good, friendly, hard working people, and we were thrilled we were able to help. We couldn’t have done it without your generosity and your faith in us. We thank you and the people of Likiting Village thank you! You have truly made a real difference in their lives. A crop of nutrient laden kale ready for the picking.
CLICK HERE for an update from Lesotho
The Challenges of Food Production
Lesotho is a mountainous country, barren and plagued with erosion and the resulting poor soil quality. Most of its population of 2 million people live in remote, rural areas and are subsistence farmers. Less than 10 percent of the country’s acreage is tillable meaning that rural families struggle to survive on small plots of land with low yields. Erosion of arable topsoil is a major problem. According to the United Nations, “Government estimates put the loss of soilto erosion at 40 million tons annually - equivalent to more than 2 percent of the country's topsoil.”
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