Rotary clubs in Great Britain, Ireland and the rest of the world have succeeded in raising US $200million in new funding for polio eradication, ahead of schedule.

The fundraising milestone was reached in response to a US $355million Grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, agreed in 2007.  The Grant was guaranteed if Rotary successfully raised US $200million by June this year.  All funds have been earmarked to support polio immunisation activities in affected countries, where this vaccine-preventable disease continues to paralyse children.

In addition to delivering the promised US $355million, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has now committed an additional US $50 million, which brings the total funding to a staggering US $610 and has resulted in a massive drop in polio cases wordwide - go to www.ribi.org/thanks-for-life and its various links, for the full story of a remarkable campaign which started 27 years ago.

Rotary members acroos the globe have consisitently reached into their own pockets and worked tirelessly within communities to raise awareness and funds and here in Kintore our Club has made a fantastic effort in support of the campaign, over the few years of the Clubs' existence.

There is an obvious link between the child victims of Polio and Primary School children.  Kinellar Primary at Blackburn, Alehousewells Primary at Kemnay, Strathburn Primary and St Andrews Special School, Inverurie are all within the area covered by our Club and presentations were delivered at each of these schools over a three year period, mostly to Primary 7 pupils.  Occasionally, these presentations were delivered at morning assemblies, which encouraged individual classes to get involved in various fund raising projects.

Each of the above schools was involved in both the Bookmarks and ‘Focus on the Crocus’ fundraising initiatives, both of which have been national trademark features of the campaign.

The Club also donated funds received from the Bon Accord Car Raffle and another initiative involved members having a bowl of rice instead of the usual fare, at one of the Club meetings, but still donating the £10 cost of a normal meal.  Thainstone House Hotel supported the fundraising effort, by not charging for the basic rice meal provided. Gift Aid added to the takings.

Past President Alistair Mackay took the lead in the organisation of all the above initiatives.

Although our Club is relatively small in membership when compared with long established Clubs, it has certainly punched well above its weight in relation to the End Polio Now campaign, raising $5757 through the above initiatives and this sum is estimated to be sufficient to immunise over 17000 children.  By any standards that is a remarkable humanitarian achievement.

A Rotary car raffle took place over 43 days in the Bon Accord Centre Aberdeen, finishing on Christmas Eve when the Draw was made.

A black Mini motor car was very generously donated as the raffle prize by TAQA, Westhill.

Numerous Rotary Clubs were involved in this annual fundraiser and on 18 November and by sheer coincidence, Kintore Rotarians were on duty when the winning ticket was sold to Heather Lovie, from Castle View Place, Kintore.

Delighted winner Heather picked out Rotarian Doug Garden as the "ticket seller”.  She couldn’t believe her luck, adding that she had been a winner of a car in a previous  competition.

27500 raffle tickets were sold at the Bon Accord Centre over the 43 days, with further ticket sales at other events and venues resulting in a massive total of 57741.

The chosen charity for this years’ fundraiser was North of Scotland cancer charity CLAN and the presentation of the car to Heather took place at CLAN’s new premises in Westburn Road, Aberdeen on 28 January.

The picture shows Heather and her partner with Kintore Rotarians Victor Nicol, Doug Garden and Mike Kelman, all of whom were selling raffle tickets on 18 November.

Make a world of difference for the children of Africa by rounding up your old bikes (for age 10 years +) and bring them along to Kintore Public Hall on 18 February 2012 between 9.30 am and 12 midday.  You will be able to enjoy a coffee when you deliver your bikes as we are holding a coffee morning to raise funds.

The Rotary Club of Kintore, in partnership with the Rotary Club of Ellon will:

• Get them refurbished at UK Prisons
• Ship them out to their new life in Africa
• Gratefully receive £10 per bike to go towards transport costs

You will:

• Transform childrens lives by getting them to schools which are too far to walk to
• Leave more space in your garage

Contact: Jim Thomson 07776172152 or Kenny Thomson 07407603175

A simple but ingenious means of capturing and storing water in drought ridden Gambia was the feature of a talk from Eleanor McAllister, a friend and Rotarian from the Ellon Club who visited Kintore on Thursday 19 January.

A massive effort is required from villagers to dam rivers.  This captures water and after a period of time, sand finds its way downstream to the dam, building there in sufficient quantities to store water under it, creating shelter which lessens evaporation and filtering out bacteria. The water is then collected from under the sand as and when required.

Cleaner water has resulted in fewer deaths from disease and a further spin off has been the increase in vegetation on the banks of the rivers near the dams, providing opportunties for crop growing; using nature for a food and water initiative on a fantastic scale.

Eleanor explained that Rotary and other donations are principally used to buy cement for the dam walls, and this financial support has transformed the lives of people in a land where water is so important and previously had to be collected by women.  It was not unusual for women to spend many hours a day walking to collect a mere 20 litres of water.

The sense of self help and community spirit created by these sand dam projects has been a joy to see.

For further information on the project, please go to www.excellentdevelopment.com

The photograph shows Eleanor with Club President Susan Milne.

Members thoroughly enjoyed a surprising talk at their weekly meeting at Thainstone House Hotel on Thursday 12th January. Mr Ken Killham spoke on the potentially difficult topic of Environmental Remediation.  But Ken, previously a Professor at Aberdeen University for 30 years, left most of his technical jargon at home, and explained clearly how the clean up of pollution in Scotland is a 'good news' story. 

Ken explained that one of the methods of cleaning up industrial contaminated areas on brownfield sites was by doing some large scale composting.  This returns the soil to a good state, in addition to being a cost effective solution.

The other exciting part of this story is that much of the expertise for “environmental remediation” is based in Scotland. It has the potential to be big business. This gives Scotland such a great opportunity to use its' expertise across the UK; around the world too. 

Kintore Rotarian Stewart Pirie thanked Ken for his enthusiastic and cheerful talk, on a subject which no one could have guessed was quite so positive.

The photograph shows Ken, with President Susan Milne and Rotarian Bill Christie.

The Club was delighted to write to thank numerous local businesses for supporting its' fundraising efforts during recent years, by displaying the Rotary collection cans in their premises and also their customers, for adding money to the cans.

A total of 21 cans are allocated to business premises in Kemnay and Kintore and the takings from the cans for 2011 was a fantastic £816.90.

In addition to supporting local causes, this money goes towards supporting international projects such as SHELTERBOX and leaflets about it were enclosed with the letters, simply because it is an excellent example of how donations received through business and community support at local level can make a huge difference, when combined with that from other areas and managed by the massive worldwide organisation of Rotary International.

People we will never meet will deeply appreciate what has done for them locally, by the Club and the businesses which support the collections.

Like children wanting to hear more of a story book, members of the Rotary Club of Kintore at their weekly meeting at Thainstone House Hotel on Thursday 10th November, were eager to welcome back guest Alan Brownie from B.A. Dowsing Team to hear the 2nd part of a dowsing adventure.

At a previous meeting back in the summer (see photo and article dated 9 June), Alan told an attentive room of Kintore Rotarians how he planned to locate a lost German field gun by dowsing for it and this week they returned to their seats, keen to hear how the dowsing adventure had turned out.

Originally Alan told the Rotarians that the gun had been used in the Battle of the Somme towards the end of WW1, taken home as a military souvenir, and been located in Stuartfield village. The story went that the villagers weren’t fond of the German gun and it had somehow got buried in a nearby quarry.

Over a couple of days in September this year, a team of dowsers and a large digger helped in the task of locating the field gun.  Without knowing its exact location, Rotarians were amazed to learn that, with the use of rods and crystals from the B.A.Dowsing Team, the gun was accurately located.

Alan Brownie discovered that he has a gift for dowsing, and although it is usual to dowse for water, Alan has a passion for digging up items from the past.  He is producing a dvd detailing more about the Stuartfield dowsing dig.

Following his talk, Kintore Rotarian Garry McDonald thanked Alan for telling Rotarians his Tale of the Missing Gun and returning to tell us how the mystery was solved.