A Rotarian in all but name? Becoming a Rotarian did make a difference.

When I am ask how I joined Rotary I answer: ”unwillingly!”. I was told by a friend to assist him in doing a slide show presentation on the project of the Beautification of Luganville (Espiritu Santo). I came to assist my friend by passing the slides in his old slide projector, he was doing his talk presentation to Santo Rotary Club. 

I was amazed when I realised that all the members of what I took for a semi-clandestine society were good friends of mine or people I knew for years and who never mentioned to me they were Rotarians. At the end of the presentation I was proposed to stay and assist to the meeting, few weeks later I was inducted.

Nothing was new to me as I had been doing Rotary work unknowingly when I was assisting communities in setting up rain catchments or repairing Aid posts or classrooms using funding from French Embassy. 

My connection with Aid Donors and Volunteers networks became an asset when few years later I was told at 11.30am to prepare a project worth Euros 40,000 by 1.30pm. I used my lunch time giving some phone calls and getting quotes to prepare a draft project of providing rainwater catchment to remote communities. I started with a list of 80 tanks mainly needed for communities in the Shefa Province. 

The project was approved and while I turned the draft into a formal application I recalled David Hutchinson, Director of Communities Services, telling me through RAM (Rotary Against malaria) I can get you 50cents to one dollar. By Magic the €40,000 where joined by NZ$40,000 as at that time the rate was 1€ to 2NZ$. 

Finally the 80 tanks became 131 tanks and the Islands of Malekula, Epi, Malo, Santo, Ambae were added to the Shefa Islands. In five months, with help of Volunteers based is all these islands we gave more water tanks than in the ten previous Rotary years. 

All it took, few hours of my time and few dedicated friends to make a better world for hundreds of people.

Santo Rotary Club assist in resuming mass vaccination campaign in Santo

Rotary Club of Santo representative AG Rufino Pineda and Joseph Mape from Rural Health Department witnessed on October 8, 2013 the start of a mass vaccination campaign at Stone Hill in the interior of the island of Espiritu Santo.

For the last three years, no vaccinations were conducted in this area because the fridge of the nearby Fanafo Health Clinic had terminated its working life. Difficulties for medical staff from Luganville to access these remote terrains had compelled Rural Health staff to conduct mass vaccinations over a long period as vaccines couldn’t be preserved in the nearby Health Clinic.

With a new fridge generously donated by the Santo Rotary Club, a nine-day mass vaccination campaign was organized to immunise the young population scattered around the interior bush.

Willie Tangis is the Nurse Practitioner leading the vaccination campaign that started at Willie Rau Nakamal as the local Aid Post was not yet operational.

This campaign began with six-month old Suzan, who received her pentavalent vaccines by intra muscular injection, including Diphtheria, Hepatitis B, Tetanus, Whooping Cough, and Petausis, along with oral Polio vaccine. Hundreds of young children were then immunized. 

A few weeks earlier, a young boy from Fanafo was hospitalized in a critical condition at the Northern Hospital in Luganville.  Fortunately acute treatment saved him after he was diagnosed having Tetanus from a nasty cut. It is hoped that such things won’t happen again when the whole community of this area benefit from the vaccination campaign.

Picture: Nurse Practitioner Willie Tangis injecting pentavalent Vaccine at 6 months baby Suzan, far left AG Rufino Pineda, far right former Head of Health Joseph Mape.