Rotary Club of
Godalming Woolsack
humanity in motion
rotary international in great britain
and ireland
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rotary international in great britain
and ireland
humanity in motion
Revised 02.02.2010
Woolsack welcome new members to help in the quest to support all those in plight.
Regular Meetings are held most Mondays 7:30pm for 8pm at West Surrey Golf Club
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Return visit for possible twinning with Goeree Overflakkee club in Holland. Read more . . .
A fairytale that needs to be told!
The Samson centre was opened in 2005 for suffers of MS (Multiple Sclerosis, a progressive unpredictable disease of the central nervous system which causes spasmodic numbness through to paralysis) by giving both the suffers and their carers’ practical and emotional support. Initially accepting 40 members, this has now risen to a staggering 140!
The charity has managed to raise sufficient capital to build new premises, diversify available treatments and more than treble its membership.
They have also been able to secure extra funding from Guildford and Waverley Grants Committee.
The charity provides one-to-one and group physiotherapy sessions as well as supervised fitness instruction, specialist talks and the provision of drop-in clinics with an MS Clinical Practitioner supplied by the Royal Surrey Hospital. The centre strives to keep members active through regular exercise and to maintain a positive outlook on life. A Barometric Oxygen Treatment [BOT] facility has been installed at the Centre and offers members a different form of treatment in order to manage their MS. Although still considered experimental, it has proved very successful.
Samson stresses that they remain continually grateful to local groups such as the Rotary Club of Godalming Woolsack for their ongoing support. This enables them to further improve the facilities and provide more treatment rooms, a larger more efficient BOT facility and more private counselling facilities. Their success has simply amazed us all!
Woolsack members clean up Milford Hospital for the winter
The Horrors of Haiti
What a week! The roads are icy, the pavements are slippery, the postman hasn’t called, the dustbins have not been emptied and we are down to our last pint of milk – what a disaster – or is it really?
The people of Haiti might not agree. Many have no homes or shelter, families have been split up and no-one knows who is dead, alive, injured or buried in the rubble. The roads are broken up and filled with bodies and debris, there is no clean water, food or means of communication and the victims feel that the world doesn’t care or perhaps doesn’t even know of their plight.
Staying at home with an extra jumper, a mug of black tea and listening to the radio or ringing friends is not too bad after all.
Godalming Woolsack Rotary Club have been collecting money outside Waitrose to provide ShelterBoxes for Haiti. Each box will provide a custom made quality tent for ten people. Inside the strong plastic container there is a wood burning or multifuel stove, pans and utensils, water storage and purification equipment, a toolkit containing a hammer, an axe, a saw and a shovel and even a little pack for children containing crayons etc. The cost of each box is £490, which includes transportation to the affected area.
A ShelterBox Response Team arrived in Haiti last Thursday and reported that there were tens of thousands dead, even more left homeless and scenes of chaos. The catastrophe continues to unfold and ShelterBox are working round the clock to ensure emergency shelter reaches the island as quickly as possible. Reports from Haiti say thousands of people have been sleeping in the open air, with some people even being forced to sleep among dead bodies. There is no food and little water Mark Pearson, who was one of the first on the ground after the Indian Ocean Tsunami, said: ‘This is worse than the tsunami. It’s utter chaos at the airport. Buildings have been completely reduced to rubble and even the hospital has been destroyed. It’s a full-scale emergency, there’s so much destruction.
‘The priority at the moment is search and rescue and then after that emergency shelter provision, so obviously there’s frustration. There’s no fuel and people are hunting for water. It’s difficult to put the scale of destruction into words.’
By Saturday 256 boxes had arrived in Haiti having been dispatched from Curacao, and a further 70 were on their way from El Salvador. Another 700 had left the United Kingdom on their way via Miami and Virgin Atlantic. Many more are urgently needed.
Godalming Woolsack Rotary Club sprang into action with their triple ‘I’ initiative. President Ian Bowell assisted by Ian Coult and Ian Smith decided that swift and positive action was needed. The Manager of Waitrose in Godalming, Liam Mooney, was very helpful and supportive and a collection was organised outside the store on Saturday and Sunday.
Rotary Woolsack thank the good residents and shoppers of Godalming who responded in a very generous fashion and far more paper than coin was collected. The Rotarians assisting even stayed on for an extra 40 minutes as there was such magnificent support and a steady flow of income.
To date we have raised in excess of £4300 and with a contribution from club funds we will be able to purchase a further 10 ShelterBoxes.
Thanks are due to the three Ian’s for their considerable efforts to organize the collection, to the members of the Rotary Club of Godalming Woolsack who turned out a short notice, to Waitrose for their support and encouragement, but most of all to the wonderful generosity of people of all ages for their magnificent contributions. In addition to the street collection, Puttenham Golf Club members contributed £ 222 and there was £ 100 from the United Reform Church.
