The overwhelming reason, a community citizen is motivated to join a Rotary club is because they want to support and improve the city in which they live. However, it doesn’t take long for them to learn that there are many communities throughout the world who also need help much more desperately than we do in our affluent country and community.
In serving both needs, Rotarians are encouraged to put Rotary’s motto “Service Above Self”, into action. So, when Kingston Rotary Club member Elizabeth Good, discovered the NGO Upendo Daima, operating in Mwanza, Tanzania, which is located on the southern shore of Lake Victoria, was providing accommodation, counseling, food, and education to street children but didn’t have enough beds for the 64 children in their care, she set out to do something about it.
(see Children and Young People Living on the Streets in Mwanza, Tanzania – Headcount Report October 2012 )
Eventually, she raised sufficient funds from other members to fund the construction of 8 bed frames. To get the funds to Upendo Daima she worked through an NGO in the Netherlands and The Rotary Club of Igoma, a suburb of Mwanzia.Good explained that “The children come to Upendo Daima, through community assessment in cooperation with a government organization and through street children’s gangs that know each other. Some of these children come from different parts of Tanzania that moved to Mwanza city for reasons, such as poverty at home, family conflict, or to escape child labor.”
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Recently, Good learned that the bed frames are now constructed, and that Upendo Daima have secured mattresses from students who have just graduated from a nearby high school. “They do need to be recovered,” she said, “and they have someone coming in to do that this coming week.”
Good says she, “Hopes to raise more money for Upendo Daima in the future. They do so much good for so many children”. She also plans to take it with her when she goes to Tanzania, this fall.
Upendo Daima is Swahili. Upendo means “charity” and Daima means “your kindness”, however machine learning (AI) translated it as “love always”. Seems appropriate.