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SORSOGON
CITY—It all started with a donation of Bio-Sand Water
Filters (BSWF) that provided potable water for 755 poor
families in three Sorsogon towns and two urban barangays
of this city, and now the Rotary Club of Brighton Beach
(RCBB) in Melbourne, Australia, is into a program for
more Aid To Municipality (ATM).
“Indeed,
the water-filter project has created a ‘flow on effect’
and the RCBB successfully launched another program—the
ATM that attracted overseas funding,” Dr. Rolando Dealca,
the Rotary Club of Metro Sorsogon (RCMS) president, said
here.
ATM is a
rehabilitation program with a holistic approach aimed at
several sectors of the community, such as health and
medical aid, education, livelihood for sustainability,
feeding and support to children and clean water, Dealca
explained.
Identified as recipients are school, youth workers,
hospitals, orphanage and families within eight
municipalities where incidence of poverty is more
remarkable, he said.
Among
those in the pipeline is a major water-management
rehabilitation project for clean water for 6,200
residents at no cost for occupants of a Gawad Kalinga
housing village, seaport, a hospital, schools using a
reservoir on a mountain that the municipality has
developed three years ago, Dealca said.
The
construction of the pilot clean-water facilities was
initiated in early 2008 by the RCMS for residents of the
municipalities of Irosin, Magallanes and Juban, and the
barangays of Talisay and Basud of this city.
It was
carried out through the support of the Australian Peace
Corps team, led by Noah Cohen, while the BSWF concept
was recommended by Dr. Francis Dabu, president of the
Rotary Club of Naga City, who also distributed donated
filter units to Camarines Sur and Masbate.
RCBB’s
International Services director Ruth Carlos-Martinez did
all the legwork in coordinating with RCMS for the
installation sites, budgets and ensuring that new skills
and jobs are created for out-of-school youths, Dealca
said.
After
the pilot BSWF installations, a valid point raised by
Cohen was: “As it proved to be beneficial for both the
community and the youth, further funding should be put
in place for future filters in other municipalities.”
Apparently, Cohen said, the water-filter project was
only the “tip of the iceberg,” as Martinez has signed up
another Melbourne-based Rotary Club to assist with
additional 190 water filters for Sorsogon.
Brig.
Gen. Neil Graham, Australian Defense Force military
consultant and a Melbourne Rotarian assisting Martinez,
in a statement said,
“It is
interesting to track Ruth’s overseas projects as she is
an astute planner and remarkable that within just two
weeks to look at a water project on the Philippine
island, she came back with a long list of tasks to do
for a province called Sorsogon.”
Rotarian
visits are crucial as it highlight opportunities for
potential community-development projects overseas such
as the ATM that promoting in Melbourne for Martinez was
not easy, as she was faced with queries such as, “what,
where and why Sorsogon, and she would often end up
giving a tourist spiel on Sorsogon,” Graham said.
Martinez’s key selling point to Melbourne audiences is that, “We make a living by
what we get, but it is through efforts and willful
tenacity to help the underprivileged that we make a life
by what we give,” Graham added. |
