International

After joining with others to work on overseas Aid projects two of our members set out to find a project that we could call our own. After a great deal of communication with both Port Vila Rotary and the Peace Corps they found it. An incomplete Aid Station on the island of Tongoa in Vanuatu.

The Aid Station was started in 1994 but not finished. The villagers from the two villages it was designed to serve - Meriu and Bonga Bonga - were still faced with a one and a half hour walk over the mountain to the nearest hospital for anything more than a cut finger. Child birth expeditions are interesting - and not always successful.

There have been three trips to the island by members of Waitakere Rotary. On the first trip, in late 2007, Kerry and Craiger scoped out the work required, tiled the interior of the Aid Station and added a toilet & septic tank to it.

On the second trip five people - Kerry, Alan & Heather, Theo & Monique - went, sorted out the water supply to the Aid Station (hey, the toilet now flushes!), added a sink, did more tiling and completed a lot of the painting.

On our third trip in June 2009 we not only finished the Aid Station, complete with Official Opening, but also supplied and installed two new watertanks - and provided books and information for the school on earthquakes.

The island had been badly damaged in an earthquake on 29th May. The local hospital sustained damage along with many other buildings - and 75% of the concrete tanks cracked.

For details of our trip check out our 24th June Bulletin

There is a lot more work to be done - including sorting out better toilets for the school and repairing the school's water supply. But first they need to repair the earthquake damage to the school.

2008 Trip

We have created two videos of our work to date