Norman Bristow and speaker Paul Bertin
Novus Rotary was blessed to have not one, but three, visitors from the Rotary Club of Kettering Huxloe.
Paul Hirst drove president-elect Norman Bristow and Paul Bertin to Thurmaston where Paul told Novus about the remarkable success that his club had achieved in Ghana.
Paul had worked in the NHS in Northampton with Ghanaian colleague Alfred who was tearful when he told Paul how he had visited his former school in Agona, in the Ashanti-Kwahu region and found it dreadfully dilapidated.
The school had been built in 1928. When Paul visited it in 2017, the roof let in rain and staff were trying to teach Information Technology by using pictures of laptop computers and of computer mice. Working with the Rotary Club of Winneba and the Rotary Club of Kettering, the Rotarians of Kettering Huxloe got a grant from The Rotary Foundation (the world’s biggest independent charitable foundation) to double the £2,000 they raised.
With Rotarian quantity surveyors and architects on the ground in Ghana, they were able to restore the building and install battery-powered lights and laptops so that even when there was power outage, work could continue for 12 hours a day, not only by the 800 pupils at the Agona Swedru School but by up to 3,300 children from five neighbouring schools.
Paul told Novus Rotarians that the head teacher at the school, Dorothy, had contacted a former pupil who is now a surgeon in Toronto, Canada, and another in Germany who had made substantial donations to their former school. Also, in Ghana university graduates are required to do two years ‘national service’ and consequently some former pupils had returned to give time as volunteer teachers.
Novus Rotary members are to consider re-scheduling a postponed fund-raising event to help Kettering Huxloe and the Rotary Club of Winneba continue the remarkable success they have already achieved.
This page last edited at 23:30 on Thursday, 13/04/2023
