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News from around the District
A little reading goes a long way
Pupils at a Darlington school have collected more than 2,000 books to help stock a library in Kenya. Children in the Rotakids group at Abbey School collected the books to donate to the national charity Just Be a Child, which sends children’s books in containers to towns and villages in Kenya who don’t have access to reading materials. The collection started on World Book Day last month (March), when pupils also dressed up as their favourite characters, but this was extended to allow the youngsters to bring in more books they don’t read any more. Abbey Rotakids have a link to Darlington Rotary, who support Just be a Child and have already sent several truckloads of books to Kenya. Rotary’s link with the school, Nigel Little, said: ‘The pupils have done a fantastic job in collecting such a huge number of books. The Rotakids group organised the project very well and surpassed by a very long way their target of 600. ‘Darlington Rotary has now collected the books and they will be on there way shortly to help children thousands of miles away enjoy reading every day.’
Students coached in Peace Advocacy
Consett Rotary have taken part in a peace advocacy programme with young people from North Durham Academy in Stanley. Local Rotarians and Rotarians from Scotland have been training a group of students from North Durham Academy to be Peace Advocates as part of an international Peace Project. The peace project is about recognising and enabling young people’s skills in conflict resolution, leadership, improving mental health and relationships. John Brierley from Consett Rotary and Susan Mellor from Derwentside Rotary helped Peace Project founders, Jean and Keith Best do the initial training with a group of Year 8&9 volunteers. John and Susan are continuing to help the students become fully qualified Peace Advocates and set up a school project to help other students at NDA.
Rotary Blyth leads redevelopment of old colliery site
Isabell Heap is an old colliery site situated on the outskirts of Blyth. Local residents, Councillors and children's groups, along with fellow Rotarians took on a project to regenerate an abandoned area. Their objective was to turn it into an area where people of Blyth and visitors had a nice place to walk and undertake activities and to establish sanctuaries for local wildlife including red squirrels. The project included getting to know the importance of looking after the wild life in the area and improving their environment. Volunteers and local children learned new skills and gained knowledge of how to look after the woods, pathways and habitats. Planting trees, wild flowers, cultivating a wild meadow and looking after a wild pond were all included. This area was previously a haven for drug users and fly tipping and all of this has now been cleared away, turning the site into a recreation area.
Across the seas
Through a Rotary Foundation approved Global Grant, Rotary Alnwick was able to provide specialist equipment and surgical training for the treatment of cranio-facial deformities at Peradeniya Hospital in Kandy, Sri Lanka. The complexity of many deformities is such that cranio-facial reconstruction is only possible with highly specialist equipment which, prior to the Global Grant, was not available in Sri Lanka. Donations enabled the setting up of a digital laboratory to enable complex surgeries lasting anything from 8 to 18 hours to be conducted in Peradeniya with much more accurate and predictable results. Equipment provided has enabled the use of digital planning, simulations and design techniques to improve the quality of reconstructions and construction of patient-specific implants and prostheses in order to manage severe facial deformities. In the words of one of the senior surgeons, “ If it was not for this donation, the surgery would not be a dream for these patients. Now they will live not die with the abnormalities in their jaws. Cancer patients would definitely die if it was not for the surgeries we now can do. If not for your donation, post-graduates who are our future specialists would have zero exposure to these life-saving ultra-modern technologies.”