ESCAPING the cabin fever, learning and finding ways to help communities in the longer term are what members of The Rotary Club of Uitenhage South are doing during the Covid-19 lockdown.
“In a very positive and productive way the club has been having spectacular meetings with international speakers,” said Rotarian Clive Hassel, media relations officer of The Rotary Club of Uitenhage South.
Their weekly club meetings have taken a different turn since lockdown began. On Monday, March 30 the guest speaker was Nan McCreadie from the Rotary club of Teddington in the United Kingdom. Amongst other things she is on the world board of Rotary Family Health Days, something that The Rotary Club of Uitenhage South annually participates in at the LoveLife Centre in KwaNobuhle.
Sharing of valuable knowledge
“Last week our speakers were Dr Anna-Mary Young, a consultant from St Georges Hospital London, giving us a deep insight into how the Covid-19 pandemic is being handled there. As she understands the situation here, having seen our communities first hand, she was able to give lots of advice and pointers on how we can best assist as a Rotary Club,” said Rotarian Hassell.
“The second speaker, Christo Forster a Rotarian from Freetown, Sierra Leone, has many years’ experience in water and sanitation projects funded throughout the world by Rotary. He was able to enthusiastically explain how we, as a small club in Uitenhage, could easily raise huge sums of money in international grants for the betterment of the water and sanitation needs of our rural communities.
“The knowledge of Christo Forster on how they handled the Ebola crisis was eye opening and puts our current lockdown rules and compliance into perspective as a very halfhearted attempt. Their population is even poorer than ours, and their public health system is almost nonexistent, but with compliance and political determination they conquered it,” said Hassell.
On Monday the Rotarians from the Uitenhage South club listened to the President of the Rotary Club of Huntsville Texas, Professor Li-Jen Lester. This coming Monday they will listen to Chris Notley, who has worked with McLaren for many years and he will be give the Uitenhage Rotarians some insight to behind the scenes with Formula 1 racing.
“These meetings are of course virtual via Zoom and have been eye opening to the members. They will continue after lockdown because there’s a world out there and spectacular international speakers who will enable and assist the Rotary Club to be considerably more effective in bringing much needed support to our communities,” said Hassell.
Please see attached pics. Dr Anna-Mary Young addressing the meeting, Christo Forster addressing the meeting and ‘the meeting’.
