 Jane Pennington from North Balwyn RC originally joined Rotary in 1997 in Puna India. Jane a long time associate of the Girl Guide movement and a recent President at North Balwyn Rotary has been a serious contributor to the community.
As guest speaker she explained that that clubs membership is predominantly men (sounds familiar) and there was a drive by the partners to identify a special project in which they could be directly involved.
The Solomon Island is a country composed of 900+ islands just to our North but very undeveloped by any standards. Honiara is the capital. Its per-capita GDP is low, and more than 75% of its labour force is engaged in subsistence and fishing. Civil conflicts since about 2000 has seen units of our Australian police force stationed there--Jane commented that the last units are due to leave soon.
Village life dominates and the young women/girls have limited educational and skill development opportunities. Jane and her team noted that simple things like feminine hygiene goods/garments are rare and sought out to do something about it.
So they fabricated a range of such items, and set up a scheme by which the local girls could be taught to duplicate that with ongoing sewing workshops to make panties, pads and like.
Jane and the team made templates and samples in Australia, traveled to Honiaria and stayed with the Salesian Sisters at Henderson, not far from the capital, Honiara, Guadalcanal. There are four Sisters in the community who established a girls' hostel in 2010. It accommodates up to 36 young women from all over the country and girls can complete their education, study and learn valuable employment and life skills.
There the team enjoyed the hospitality of the Sisters and company of the girls (singing concerts/sessions were especially enjoyed) and taught the girls how to use sewing machines and make the hygiene kits. Word spread and girls from other communities now visit the hostel and partake in regular lessons to learn the fabrication technique. Materials and sewing machines are limited of course and key to sustaining future production.
Photos of the Sisters, the North Balwyn RC team, the sewing machines and the smiling girls were a delight and a reminder of how a simple concept can prosper to an ongoing project of self help in a lesser developed region.
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