A Business Meeting,our first Prospective Virtual Member, Lorna Wridgeway of Toastmasters & Rotary and Covid-19 in Kenya.

Last Week

Masego Matiko

It was a Business Meeting but there was little business to discuss, primarily because we are coming to the end of the Rotary Year and owing to lockdown cancellations of our Art Festival and various social functions.  There was discussion on the mask-making project which is turning into entrepreneurship and job creation in Alex. but it will be next year's board that will need to think creatively where projects are concerned as we have no idea what the corona virus situation will be long term.

Lozenzo Locatelli-Rossi a

Given Mahlaba

James Croswell talked about his position as Chairman of the District Health Education & Wellness Committee next Rotary Year and he would be approaching healthy people, presumably, to be on the committee from across the District.

We had three visitors, PP Lozenzo Locatelli-Rossi from Italy, a past member and a prospective Virtual Member, our Rotary Exchange Student, Masego Matiko and a first time visitor, Given Mahlaba.


This Week
Our speaker this week is Lorna Wridgeway who is a socal worker and lectures on social work at UJ.  She joined Toastmasters in 2018  and belongs to the Sages Club in Emmarentia.   As a relatively new member it will be interesting to hear what she has to say.  Rotary and Toastmasters ahave established a working relationship at an international level and, as a club, we are encouraged to establish contact locally.

Rotary clubs in East Africa are forging partnerships to provide hand washing stations and food in areas where social distancing is a luxury that few can afford

Almost 80 percent of the population in Nairobi, Kenya, lives in informal settlements where it’s not unusual for families of day labourers to live together in one house. Surviving day to day on the meager wages they typically earn as shop assistants, construction workers, or domestic employees, as many as eight people cook, do homework, eat, and sleep in these tight quarters.

In short, social distancing is a luxury that many poor Kenyans can’t afford.

“If the [COVID-19] pandemic hits here, like it has in North America and other places, it will be just catastrophic” because of the inability to social distance, says Geeta Manek, a Rotary Foundation trustee-elect and member of the Rotary Club of Muthaiga, Kenya. “We’re working very hard, through preventative measures, desperately trying to keep this thing away from us.”

Shortly after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Joe Otin, governor of Rotary District 9212 (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and South Sudan), formed a district-wide response team. Chaired by Nairobi-East Rotarian Joe Kamau, the team is working with clubs across the district to provide hand washing stations, deliver food to families who have lost jobs, and raise money for personal protective equipment.

“When [Kamau] asked what we wanted to do first, we said let’s go with hand washing stations,” says Manek, a member of the response team.

Manek led a fundraising effort in Ethiopia and Kenya that raised more than $21,000 within 20 days. Prime Bank in Kenya offered to match all contributions 1-to-1. The team used the money to purchase 100 water tanks and then persuaded the supplier to donate an additional 100. The 100-litre tanks rest on metal stands and have brass taps at the bottom and ledges for soap. The response team has distributed these hand washing stations in Kilifi, Mombasa, and Nairobi and is now working with national health departments to decide who to help next. The tanks are being refilled by trucks, but local authorities are also discussing ways to pipe in water.

The Rotary Community Corps, groups of non-Rotarians who work alongside Rotary members on service projects, are teaching people effective hand washing techniques, counting the number of times people come back to wash their hands, and collecting other data. Clubs are also partnering with Shofco, a grassroots organization that provides critical services, advocacy, and education for girls and women in Kenya’s urban slums, to monitor the stations.

The response team is also using the stations to ask people coming to wash their hands for information about families who are short of food. Manek says work-from-home orders made it impossible for day laborers to earn a living. Clubs have distributed packages of sugar, maize meal, rice, lentils, salt, and soap.

Purchasing personal protective equipment for frontline health care workers has been more difficult. Manek says they’ve been able to negotiate with vendors and donors to get some surgical masks and gowns, but supplies are scarce and much of it is available only by airlift, which makes it too expensive.

If there is a positive side to the crisis, it’s been the way it has energized Rotarians and attracted the attention of partnering organizations.

“We’ve been the first ones on the ground,” Manek says. “We’re getting invitations from corporate partners like banks and insurance companies who are seeing what we’re doing and want to work with us.”