Rotary Club of Skegness – Project : Desks to Amreli Schools.
A visit to India was made in 2007 by Rotarian Peter Jude and his wife, Jashu.
They made a visit to the City of Amreli in the state of Gujurat meeting up with the Rotary Club of Amreli. A tour of the city (population 90,000) took in a number of completed projects which had been achieved through the Rotary Foundation Matching Grant Scheme. They also visited a number of primary and secondary state schools.
The visit to the schools produced the idea to look at a project between the two Rotary clubs for educational purposes. Peter and Rotarian Pratap Panchal agreed to present the idea of a joint project to provide desks to twenty Primary and Secondary schools in the city. The children did not have desks but despite this were anxious to learn and worked on the floor in their classrooms. This is a very poor area, but despite this the children were anxious to learn, they were dressed well and extremely polite, attendance was very good. We were impressed by the commitment to learning by the teachers who were working in a difficult situation due to the lack of funds.Both Rotary Clubs agreed to pursue the opportunity of a Matching Grant.
Under the Presidency of David Platt of the Skegness Club, Rotarians Peter Jude, Llew Kelly and Duncan Moffatt took the lead on this project with Duncan being the key person on managing the Matching Grant process. Agreement was reached with District and RI to the proposed project of supplying 1300 desks, each desk providing seating for three children giving a total of 3,900 places. £3000 was raised by the Skegness Club and combined with Amreli, District & RI the total amount required of $42,000 was achieved. The project was completed at the end of 2009 during Rotarian Pat King’s Presidency.
Rotarians Peter Jude and Gordon Hawkins with their wives visited Amreli early March 2010 to be part of the official handover of the desks to the schools. “We were received by children, their parents, teachers and the community with warmth and tremendous gratitude for what the Rotary organisation had done through this project”.
This has been an excellent example of what can be achieved by two clubs (it was not always easy or straight forward) and the outcome for the children of Amreli will be to facilitate educational attainment which parents, their children and the teachers are committed to under very difficult and poor circumstances.
