SPECIAL PROJECT HIGHLIGHT - TANZANIA

Our club will often engage in a project of special meaning and immense breadth. Indeed, perhaps this club's most lasting legacy will be one of its special projects: a 2006 donation of $22,667 in funds for the purchase of equipment that will help dig water wells in impoverished villages throughout Tanzania.

When Rotarian Roger Schwartz of Oakdale visited Tanzania in 2001, he helped initiate a series events that cascaded into an achievement that changed the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, impoverished Tanzanians.

Schwartz traveled with St. Paul Partners, a group concerned about the state of safe drinking water in Tanzania where women and children would commonly make mile-long trips on foot to collect diseased and polluted drinking water - the only water available.

Through the work of St. Paul Partners and now our Rotary Club, Schwartz estimates they have dug or improved some 60-plus wells, providing clean drinking water for the first time to some 25,000 Tanzanians.  Rotary has also helped repair and upgrade the water servic to Ilula Hospital of Iringa, Tanzania.