Our Projects

Our Projects are designed to help those less fortunate than ourselves either here in Shepperton or further afield in this country or abroad. Some of these projects last over several years and we often combine with other Rotary Clubs for larger projects. In addition to the money we raise, we also receive matching money from the Rotary Foundation which is based in America and can double or even treble the money or services we provide.
POLIO PLUS

Our aim, with the Rotary movement throughout the world, is to eliminate polio. Rotary, working with the WHO, has been working towards this since 1985 and polio is now only endemic in four countries in the world, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and India and we are very close to reaching our goal.
With the new vaccines, we are down to less than 2000 cases a year from 1000 cases a day in 1988. To learn more visit the Rotary website or view the history of polio or the latest video showing mass innoculations by a polio team in action.

In 2010, one of our members - Karen Sutton (see her report)- went out to India to help with a mass inoculation project with the new bivalent vaccine. Developed to stop transmission of the type 1 and type 3 wild polioviruses simultaneously, bOPV was introduced in all four polio-endemic countries -- Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan -- in late 2009 and early 2010. It has helped reduce the incidence of polio in India to 39 cases as of 26 October, compared to 498 for the same period in 2009. The number of cases in Nigeria has fallen to 8 from 382 for that period.

Dictionaries 4 Life

We have continued to donate dictionaries to local schools each year but the project started in 2007 when one of our Club Rotarians - John Dumbrell was District Governor.

We raised was 2,000 euros at our District Conference in Lille and put this money towards the Dictionary 4 Life project, aimed at donating a copy of the Usborne Illustrated Dictonary to all Year 5 pupils in the Borough of Spelthorne.

There are three other Rotary Clubs in the Borough – Staines, Shepperton & Ashford – and we all agreed to help in the project with the result that we were able to purchase 1,104 dictionaries, enough for every year 5 pupil .

An official launch by the Mayor was held in the Council Offices. Following this, members from the 4 clubs visited the 20 schools in the Borough and presented the dictionaries to each of the year children.

We had invaluable help from Gail Murphy of Spelthorne Schools Together, from Cllr Robin Sider, and from Caroline Marden of the local Education Office.

The 4 clubs came together again in 2009 to carry out a similar project. Sterling work by Ross Emmerton of the Ashford Club secured majority funding from Spelthorne’s Surrey County Councillors which enabled us to donate the Usborne dictionary to all Year 5 pupils in the Borough again this year.. Dictionaries are now in the process of being delivered to schools for presentation to pupils in September and October 2009
KHAMMAM LIMB PROJECT

Khammam is a small town near Hyderabad in India. They supply artificial legs to people in Southern India having learnt the expertise from the Jaipur Limb Project. The local government is so pleased with their work that they have been given land to build a large extension to their existing small bungalow. This will allow them to cater for many more patients. We, with the help of other clubs and the Rotary Foundation, have raised almost £15,000 to help them equip their new building. The photos show the early stages of construction and one of the limbs which is moulded from drainage piping.
Manor Mead School
Shepperton

A couple of years ago we helped a local school by providing equipment for a sensory room. This was opened by the then President of RIBI, Gordon McInally, shown with our President David Catt-Camfield.
The other pictures show somw of the equipment.
Sails for Sailability

Another project was to help sailing for the disabled by providing sails for their new boat. The presentation was made on a rather inclement day at the Queen Mary Reservoir.