Announcements and Reminders
 
Today’s Rotarian of the Week was Laura  who got a $5000 grant for RotaCare from the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. Congratulations to her and the rest of the RotaCare team!
 
Saturday Oct 1st between 8 and 8:30 is the annual holiday barrel wrap at the food bank benefitting Second Harvest.
Avenue of Service is Oct 22nd. Board members are encouraged to attend.
 
Oct 13th we are meeting at Digital Nest on Union Street in Watsonville. Sign up for your lunch choice if you are planning to come.
 
Dr. Susan Hughmanick and her team spoke today about Karimu (meaning generous or willing in Swahili) established in 2008 to renovate the Ufani Primary School in a subsistence farming village in Tanzania There is now not only a a new toilet with sinks but a new school with 350 students. They became a nonprofit in 2008. Since then Karimu has grown to offer many other services to meet local needs.
           
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
            Families here live in less than one dollar a day; however there is no currency and they live in mud huts with no electricity, no running water, no flush toilets. They have no $$ for school or health care.  Beyond the classroom, Karimu found that that infrastructure was a huge issue, so they worked on building teacher apartments which increases the likelihood that teachers will stay. Now they have three duplexes. In front of the primary school they have gardening and harvest the food for child lunches. Excess goes to market to raise funds for the school. There is now a new irrigation system to carry the water off.
 
           Dr. Hughmanick explained that after that test scores went up so high that they ended up 2nd in their area. But public health needs continued to be huge: sanitation, drinking water, respiratory disease, infant diarrheal illnesses, malaria, etc. One year they brought mosquito nets and provided education about oral rehydration.  To address the clean water issue they taught solar sterilization then they managed to create a water tank with clean chlorinated water.  They got ‘stove tech’ stoves to address the respiratory issue (caused by cooking over an open fire in unventilated huts) and also built a new cookhouse. Local women also addressed this issue by working on their own solutions. They collect clay to make stoves and sell them for $15.  There is also a microfinance co-op called  ‘Ufagro’. Anything can be funded from a loom to a cow. There are 200 members.
Medical projects include supplying the dispensary, including clean birthing kits,  and education for the nurses and midwives, including how to do resuscitation breathing if the baby is stillborn. As infant mortality is a huge issue, they also collaborated with the government to build a birth center. They got a microscope donated and it ended up with the government supplying microscopes to all the clinics. They also got a solar suitcase donated so that there is light during delivery of children. Now they also are completing a new birth center and are also building a bridge.
 
          Dr. Hughmanick concluded by saying that there are more unmet needs and donations would be appreciated.