Rotary Dream Team in Action
Past District Governor and South Berwick Rotary Club member Elias Thomas III was our speaker on September 1. Elias has been active in Rotary since 1978. His first trip to India was in January 2001. That trip had a great impact on him and solidified his understanding of the importance of the Rotary Foundation and the Polio Plus initiative. He has gone back to India every year since then, enduring a 14 hour non-stop flight from NY to Delhi each time.
During his first trip, he and his team were part of a country-wide effort to immunize 75M in on day. On January 22, 2001, 200M children under 5 were ultimately immunized, making headlines across the country. Local Interact Club members checked off each child as they were immunized, and “clean up” teams followed up by visiting homes to be sure all children in a community were immunized.
After a few years of immunizations, he began to feel that there was more that could be done during these trips. For the past six years, he and his teams have built five water catchment dams to prevent flooding during heavy rains. All are built by hand, and so far, all dams built have held up. In 2012, he returned to the site of the first dam he helped build. The area has gone from one crop a year to three. Where once it was brown and dry, it is green. Residents pump water to terraced fields to grow more crops.
He now leads a multi-national “Rotary Dream Team” each year. On his most recent trip in February 2015, there were 28 participants from 6 countries. To quote Elias, “It’s all about giving back – to the communities in which we live, as well as to the communities we may never see, but which need our support.”
If you are interested in participating in the February 2016 program, contact Elias for more information (elias@exitkeyrealestate.com). Departure is slated for February 12, 2016, but is dependent upon National Immunization Day as set by the Indian government (one of February 7, 14 or 21), and may leave one week earlier on February 5.