GSE Team Has Arrived -- Come Meet Them in Saratoga at District Conference

Tamami Seki, Team Leader Yoshiki Sugioka, Nana Matsuoka, Norio Hara, and Mika Furuhashi.  The Team starts its four-week stay in our District with the Watertown (CT) Club.

The entire inbound team plus three members of our outbound team will be in Saratoga for our District Conference.  Still time to sign up.  See you there. 

Conference Package - 1 Person- $540 2 people- $740
Includes registration, Friday lunch and dinner, Saturday breakfast, Sunday breakfast, room Friday & Saturday nights, all taxes, tips, and service charges.  Saturday dinner (optional) is at the Saratoga Springs Racetrack ($45/person). See registration form for complete details. 

Registration Form
Deadline extended for registration. Call Registrar immediately if you are interested.  See registration form

NEED COMMENTS / FEEDBACK

I feel like Sisyphus
Only comment so far is from my husband/partner.
What's going on with the rest of you Rotarians!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ShelterBox Responds to Earthquake in Western China

Fifth earthquake and tenth disaster which ShelterBox has responded to this year

International disaster relief charity ShelterBox is responding to a magnitude 6.9 earthquake that has rocked Western China.

A series of aftershocks collapsed houses, schools and offices in the ethnic Tibetan county of Yushu, leaving survivors without shelter in freezing conditions.

The charity will be working to assess the areas of greatest need and has already mobilized one of its China based ShelterBox Response Team (SRT) members.

Lasse Petersen, ShelterBox General Manager, said: "The local officials are already saying the biggest problem they're facing is lack of tents. The situation of several villages higher up in the mountains is still unknown, and roads and communications have been cut. Reports suggest there's widespread destruction and we are liaising with our personnel in China to assess the need."

The quake, which struck at 7:49 PM ET (0749 local time) on Tuesday, April 13, was centred 150 miles north of Qamdo in Tibet and 235 miles south of the mining town of Golmud in Qinghai, and had a depth of 6.2 miles according to the United States Geological Service.
ShelterBox previously responded to a magnitude 7.9 quake in May 2008 in neighbouring Sichuan province. At that time ShelterBox provided emergency shelter for and estimated 45,000 people after the earthquake devastated a huge area of South Western China and left millions homeless. 
Veronica Brandon Miller, executive director of ShelterBox USA said that this marks the fifth earthquake and tenth disaster which ShelterBox has responded to this year.

"Having provided shelter for upwards of 150,000 disaster survivors since January of this year already," said Miller, "ShelterBox continues to respond quickly to ensure the survivors can have adequate shelter in the critical days after a disaster."

Individual tax-deductible donations to ShelterBox USA can be made at www.shelterboxusa.org or via text message by sending SHELTER to 20222 for a one-time $10 donation

ShelterBox makes the difference in Uganda

At around 6pm local time on Monday, March 1, a torrent of mud and huge boulders hurtled down the slopes of Mount Elgon, an extinct volcano in the Bududa district of eastern Uganda.

The mudslides wiped out an entire village including a health centre and a church where people had gathered to pray. Children sheltering in a village shop from the heavy rain were all killed when a river of thick mud buried the building.

ShelterBox Response Team (SRT) members Stuart Oates (UK) and Laura Dale (UK) were sent to the disaster hit region and distributed aid for up to 2,000 people.

Standing on the site of the mudslides it was difficult to take in the scale of the disaster. A few mud-beaten shacks were perched lopsided on the edge of the slopes having narrowly missed the avalanche of mud which swept away neighbouring houses.

Metal rods from a hospital bed poked out from underneath a boulder. Household rubble and pieces of clothing were littered about the muddy slope - including a child’s red shoe.

The bright morning sunshine lit up the horrors of the last few weeks as villagers from neighbouring mountain communities helped the army dig for bodies using hoes and spades. Unable to get heavy machinery up the mountain - it is an hour and a half walk and a 15 minute drive from the nearest road passable by truck - soldiers hike up the mountain everyday burdened by the task of searching for buried villagers.

So far 97 bodies have been recovered from the mud with up to 400 people feared missing. One man from the village, his eyes sunken and his hands clasped in prayer, had lost every member of his family and not one body had been found. Another mudslide victim was unidentifiable so villagers buried him near where he was found.

Up to 5,000 people have been displaced with roughly 3,500 based at an internally displaced person’s camp some distance from the mudslides at Bulucheke. More than 1,800 of them are children.

Despite the lingering danger of more heavy rain and mudslides, some villagers chose to stay on the mountain, reluctant to leave their animals or their land.

I had less than 24 hours to finish work, research the mudslides in Uganda and do some last minute kit shopping before the deployment. I tipped everything out over the living room floor and started to pack, remembering things that had come in useful during training like Gaffa tape, which we used to bind Marie’s feet when she had crippling blisters!

I became a SRT member in November and Uganda was my first deployment. With SRT trainer David Eby’s (US) mantra ringing in my head - eat when you can, sleep when you can and manage your down time - I began the journey to Entebbe airport, Uganda, with fellow response team member Stuart Oates from Cornwall, UK.

Stepping out into 30 degree sunshine we were met by Fred Kusolo Walimbwa - the programme manager for the Child Development Fund in Mbale, who had got in touch with ShelterBox and asked for their help. After 32 hours of travelling - sometimes on the wrong side of the road through Kampala’s grid-locked traffic - we found a place to stay and got some rest.

The following morning we headed for the camp. Local women, some already very traumatised, told us they didn’t have enough aid and their children were getting sick. The Uganda Red Cross Society had been working very hard at the camp but the reality was they hadn’t dealt with a disaster on this kind of scale before.

After our assessment and discussions with other NGOs also providing aid, we called ShelterBox HQ with our ‘wish list’. Days of battling with bureaucracy and red tape followed, underlining the importance of sending out SRTs with the aid; without them it just wouldn’t get there. Luckily Uganda Red Cross agreed to act as a consignee for the aid and the secretary general wrote us a letter to hurry along the progress of the aid through customs.

200 ShelterBoxes, hundreds of hoes, stoves and other tools and 12 Classrooms in Box along arrived at Entebbe Airport a week after our first visit to the camp. We had to overcome huge challenges to get the boxes through customs and transported to the camp but with help from the Red Cross and our Ugandan driver, Hassan, we organised transport to the camp, eager to begin distribution.

Heavy rain had turned the camp into a mud-pit and the population had increased putting more strain on the already inadequate resources. The Red Cross had put together a list of the most affected households - women with four or five children under the age of five and families with expectant mothers - ready for distribution.

We began training camp volunteers how to put up the tents, use the stoves and other equipment. Green domes started to pop up all over the camp as our efforts finally began to pay off.

Families were allocated a tent and immediately set about making it a home, digging the land at the front and putting stones down to create a patio. Stoves were burning out the front of the tents and the camp suddenly had something it had been lacking - a sense of community.

Seeing families move into ShelterBox tents filled me with a pride I’ve not felt before. Not of personal achievement or altruistic gain, but of being part of a charity where the difference they make is tangible. Many of the families had lost loved ones and some of them had lost their homes and belongings.

In these desperate times, it felt good to be able to do something, however small, to help.

Watching the villagers carefully disturb the rubble which lay under the surface of the mud, the reality of the situation began to sink in. Underneath my feet, below this river of mud, there were potentially hundreds of villagers - mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children - who literally drowned on their own land.

It was an emotional experience and one which I find difficult to explain - the photographs fail to capture the scale of the disaster and fall woefully short of expressing the pain and suffering of the villagers who have lost everything.

But the experience did bring home the importance of responding to disasters and the work that ShelterBox does.

As we left for the safety of our own homes we were informed that a new 5km crack had appeared in Mount Elgon in the Munafwa district prompting fears of yet more mudslides in this beautiful African country.

http://shelterboxusa.org/news.php?id=298

Aid for Mexico -- 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Baja April 4

Emergency shelter for up to 2,600 people is being sent to Mexico after an earthquake rocked the country last week.

A 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck the Baja California region on Sunday, April 4. An estimated 25,000 people have been affected by the earthquake with the worse damage in rural areas south of Mexicali.

More than 5,000 families have reported that their homes have been either complete destroyed or severely damaged. ShelterBox Response Team (SRT) members John Mackie of Florida, and Jennifer Kormendy of British Columbia, arrived in Mexicali on Saturday, April 10 and will soon receive the first consignment of ShelterBox tents.

“The need is great,” said Mackie. “The devastated region is quite large and unlike Haiti’s earthquake, the loss of homes is not centred around a city but is found in little villages miles apart from each other.”

Mackie has said that tremors are happening daily and the people are fearful to go indoors.  He has also said that flooding has been an issue due to the fissures in the ground opening up miniature geysers of water which cause additional damage to the homes of the region.

“‘ShelterBox tents will allow the survivors to gather their families and remaining possessions and stay close to their homes until they are able to rebuild,” said Kormendy. “The tents will likely be used for up to a year as many do not possess the resources to rebuild immediately. “

The team has been working closely with locals to work through logistics.  Mackie described the locals as truly amazing people.

“The Mexican people are so supportive of our efforts,” said Mackie, “We have people who have organized volunteers to train the locals how to set up the tents and civil organizations ready to help us transport the boxes from the airport to the most needy.”

Veronica Brandon Miller, executive director of the ShelterBox USA, said that this is the fourth earthquake and ninth disaster that ShelterBox has responded to since January having provided shelter for upwards of 150,000 people.

“It is amazing that even though we have responded to the Chile and Haiti earthquakes, ShelterBox continues to get the job done,” said Miller.  “We are saving lives, one box at a time.”

Individual tax-deductible donations to ShelterBox USA can be made at www.shelterboxusa.org or via text message by sending SHELTER to 20222 for a one-time $10 donation.

ShelterBox News

The Biggest Deployment of ShelterBoxes in Four Years Saving Lives One Box at a Time Emergency disaster relief and shelter provision for more than 100,000 people deployed in earthquake-struck Haiti. Shelter for 50,000 more on the way.   Saving lives….one box at a time.

See a brief video about shelterbox, copy line below and paste in your browser:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s19-2PJWqqU

Three months after one of the worst disasters ever witnessed, over 100,000 Haitian earthquake survivors are rebuilding their lives in ShelterBox tents.

The international disaster relief charity has now delivered over 13,000 ShelterBoxes to families who lost everything in the 7.3-magnitude quake. Each box contains a disaster relief tent to house a family of up to 10, water purification, a cook stove, blankets, a tool set among other items.

As the world marks the three-month anniversary of the disaster that struck on January 12, ShelterBox is sending another 5,000 boxes of aid this month - enough for an additional 50,000 people - with thousands more ShelterBoxes due to arrive in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, during the coming months.

  

ShelterBox began its response to the Haiti earthquake just 12 minutes after the quake struck on January 12, by mobilizing a ShelterBox Response Team to Port au Prince. The next day, the first ShelterBoxes left the charity's HQ in the UK bound for Haiti.

The first boxes arrived five days after the earthquake and were used to set up emergency field hospitals, immediately saving lives by providing vital shelter to patients who had nowhere to go. Hundreds more boxes followed and ShelterBox camps were set up in suburbs of Port au Prince including Delmas, where families with newborn babies and pregnant women were prioritized for emergency shelter.

A total of 13,000 ShelterBoxes have now been distributed in Haiti with thousands more to come, making it ShelterBox's largest deployment since the Indian Ocean Tsunami. All aid has been delivered by volunteer ShelterBox Response Team (SRT) members from across the globe who have carried out extensive training with ShelterBox. More than 30 SRT members, including 12 US SRT, have now been deployed in Haiti as well as Santo Domingo and Miami coordinating logistics for Haitian aid.

Having just returned from Haiti, Philadelphia Businessman and Response Team Member Bill Decker, is proud of the ongoing efforts and successes of ShelterBox to provide shelter for Haiti.

"I'm proud of the efforts of all of the dedicated people in Haiti," said Decker, "especially my ShelterBox colleagues who have provided enough shelter and warmth for over 130,000 of those displaced. That's about 13% of the total displaced by the quake."

Partnerships forged with organizations on the ground in Haiti such as French aid agency ACTED, the French Red Cross, the IOM, local Rotarians, the Dutch military and the US military allowed SRT members to distribute boxes effectively and securely, ensuring aid has been delivered to people most in need.

"While there are still mountains of rubble and ongoing medical crises," said Decker, "we're seeing aggressive efforts by NGOs and the Haitian people to clear away debris and actually begin to rebuild. Our ShelterBox tents will continue to be a key part of that rebuilding effort."

Across the globe, people have been supporting ShelterBox on unprecedented levels and volunteers at ShelterBox HQ have been packing more boxes, in the shortest space of time, than they ever have before.

The President and Royal Patron of ShelterBox, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall Camila, visited the charity's HQ in Cornwall, England last month to thank staff and volunteers for their relief efforts in Haiti.

ShelterBox Founder and CEO Tom Henderson said, "With tens of thousands of families still living without adequate shelter in heavy rains and the hurricane season soon approaching, the need for emergency shelter is still great and we won't rest until this need is met."

For more on ShelterBox USA visit www.shelterboxusa.org

[To view a recent video of Wayne Robinson on the ground in Haiti, copy and paste this URL into your browser --
http://video.foxnews.com/v/3969588/shelter-boxes-distributed-in-haiti/?playlist_id=87249
PLEASE BE PATIENT. It takes a couple of minutes to download.]

Still time to register for District Conference -- Fun & Fellowship in Saratoga!

Conference Package - 1 Person- $540 2 people- $740
Includes registration, Friday lunch and dinner, Saturday breakfast, Sunday breakfast, room Friday & Saturday nights, all taxes, tips, and service charges.  Saturday dinner (optional) is at the Saratoga Springs Racetrack ($45/person). See registration form for complete details.   

Registration Form
Call Registration Chair ASAP if you would like to go.

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