The Rotary Club of Bali Ubud will be celebrating it sixth anniversary this year. During these past few years the Club has successfully worked on projects related to HIV AIDS and has put enormous effort into major support to Aceh following the devastating tsunami. (Asri Kerthyasa, Ubud Rotarian continues to work for tsunami victims and sits on the committee in Jakarta that oversees Rotary International’s work in Aceh.) The Club held fundraisers and formed partnerships with other Rotary clubs to build a clinic in Aceh. And this past year the Club contributed an ambulance to the clinic in Aceh.

Recently, again in partnership with other Rotary Clubs, over 600 wheelchairs were given to handicapped Balinese. The Club has also sponsored the Ubud Rotaract Club (young people 18 to 30) and their most recent project has been to raise funds for Yayasan Sengang Hati, a foundation that helps handicapped children and adolescents.

Rotary Ubud projects now in process include the continuing development of a huge garbage collection and recycling center located in Temesi. This project has received international recognition and continues to expand. A second very large project is the Schools Project which provides teaching and learning materials to elementary schools in the Ubud area. There are 44 schools in the Ubud area with an enrollment of over 7,000 children!

The Schools Project has already given huge amounts of teaching and learning materials to nine of our elementary schools and is funded to help an additional nine schools over the next few months. Soon, an additional fourteen schools will receive boxes of 100 ‘reading for pleasure books’, one box for each classroom in each of the schools. The Club’s goal is to help ALL of the 44 schools with materials that include pencils, writing books, crayons, posters, maps, globes, atlases, math kits, white boards, benches and tables for children, desks and chairs for teachers and, of course, boxes of books. If you have visited our elementary schools, you’ll know why this is such an important project. You’ll see that the classrooms have practically nothing in the way of supplies and furniture that is often over 25 years old.

The Club has also worked hard to replace badly leaking roofs, bring clean water supplies into schools, fix playgrounds that flood in the wet season and breed mosquitoes, and renovate toilets or build toilets where none exist.

Recently we received very good news that the government is now allocating funds to repair seriously leaking or damaged roofs. This allows Rotary Club Bali Ubud to focus on classrooms needs, clean water and toilet renovations. It was enormously good news that the government would also be our partner in efforts to improve conditions in the schools.

All members of the Club are volunteers and every penny donated goes to the project. There is no overhead! And if you happen to have any extra pens or pencils or anything that would be helpful to students, just drop them off at Puri Saraswati Bungalows or Ibah Resort and Hotel in Ubud and the Club will make sure they are delivered to a needy school. For additional information, contact Marilyn at moc @ easyliving.com.

Editor’s Note:
More information please visit www.rotaryubud.org

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