Reduce. Re-use. Recycle.
Those three words sum up one of Rotary’s seven areas of focus – saving and improving the environment.
Leicester sisters Sujata and Rama set up a charity now called Giving World which over 22 years has massively reduced waste from across the UK.
Businesses are invited to donate surplus and obsolete stock – all new and unused – and registered non-profits can then visit the website https://www.givingworld.org.uk/ to claim them.
The range of donated items can range from big items to small items like pens and even vegetable seeds.
When Rotary heard from Sujata that Giving World had 100,000 ballpoint pens they needed to count and repack in boxes of 500, members stepped in to help.
A former woodwork teacher who is a neighbour of president Jim Matthews very kindly drilled 50 holes in six blocks of wood. The result is that Jim and secretary Pam Spokes were able to chat while spending a couple of hours filling the holes and then emptying the pens into boxes.
The next day Jim and his wife Sally brought the total number of pens counted into 16 cardboard boxes to 8,000.
It made Jim wonder whether in future it would be possible to count pens in units of Sallys = the height of his wife being equal to the height of eight boxes of pens 🙂
Sujata expressed her gratitude and said that some of the pens would be given to NHS staff, who are always in need of ballpoint pens. Others would be shipped to schools in Sri Lanka.
She said that Giving World still needed help with the remaining pens before the Rotary team accepted the next challenge… to count and box thousands of packets of seeds.
Jim then started wondering whether his neighbour Barrie could fashion an aid to help volunteers count seed packets. He was sure, though, that Barrie would not be able to help in the next big count Rotary members would be undertaking – thousands of plastic ducks which will be used in a duck race in Knighton Park, Leicester, on Bank Holiday Sunday, May 26, 2024!
If you would like to help Rotary with this – or any other project in line with our motto of Service Above Self, please click on the Contact Us tab on any of the pages on this website.
