Tuesday's guest speaker featured Janet Kelly, who presented about the many projects that the Rotary Club of Windsor (1918) is working on in Ghana.
Janet Kelly shared information on the many projects undertaken by the Rotary Club of Windsor (1918) in Ghana. These projects were spearheaded by Dr. Godfrey Bacheyie and partnered with Ron Arkell of the club. Godfrey has been the leading force in the Ghana Project for the past 25 years which began with a sewing project to provide local women with means to support their families. The project has grown to include a community library and the construction of a school, netting for the prevention of malaria, scholarships for children to remain in school, a maternity and child health clinic, a greenhouse project and a hostel for mothers to use while their babies are being treated in the clinic. Ron Arkell’s passion is water – “Water is Life” – and he has made numerous trips to Ghana to oversee the digging of water wells which provide fresh water to local villages. To commemorate the club’s centennial in 2018, $10,000 was donated to provide a new water system in Girapa. Four wells were dug which provides 200,000 gallons of freshwater. The latest grant will allow for 20 additional wells to be dug. The Rotary Club of Windsor (1918) has partnered with the Rotary Clubs of Eglington and Windsor-St. Clair on various efforts within the Ghana Project.
The Rotary Minute featured information on the Guatemala Literacy Project. Realizing that Guatemala is one of the most illiterate countries in the world, this multi-club, multi-district project was established to provide reading and writing skills and is now considered the “gold standard” of Rotary projects. Since 1997, 600 clubs in 80 districts and serve over 225,500 people.