CLUB LENDS A HAND ROTARY DONATES TIME AND MONEY TO HELP INDIA.Byline: Daily News How do you make sense of India? The contrast of traditions and forward thinking, of beautiful saris and people living in roadside tents, children learning PowerPoint on computers but lunching on plain rice. Four Lancaster residents have just returned from a visit as members of Rotary International to see for themselves how India is striving to be a major player in the world's economy and solve the most basic problems caused by overpopulation overpopulation Situation in which the number of individuals of a given species exceeds the number that its environment can sustain. Possible consequences are environmental deterioration, impaired quality of life, and a population crash (sudden reduction in numbers caused by . Lancaster West Rotary Club members Cecil Swetland, Anne Aldrich and Diane Grooms visited Rotary Clubs in southern India on a trip led by G.S. Lakshman, a native of India and fellow member of the Lancaster West Rotary Club. Swetland is administrator of Desert Christian Schools; Aldrich is public information officer for the city of Lancaster The City of Lancaster (2002 population: 133,914) is a local government district with city status in Lancashire, England. Its main town is Lancaster, from which it obtained its city status. Other towns in the district include Morecambe, Heysham, Slyne, and Carnforth. , and Grooms is vice president for United Way in the Antelope Valley This article is about the Los Angeles County region. For the census-designated place in Wyoming, see Antelope Valley-Crestview, Wyoming. The Antelope Valley . Lakshman retired in Lancaster after a career at Bell Laboratories. ``As Rotarians, we are learning how to assist people who are eager to learn,'' said Swetland. ``With a small investment of $19,000 over the past six years, we are watching people help themselves and learning that maybe we in America are overlooking the value of our own education system.'' The Rotarians said they found Indians to be warm and industrious. At one school, they saw 80 children sitting on the bare floor of a tiny classroom, crowded shoulder to shoulder and eager to learn. One child held a bag of schoolbooks and passed them out for the next lesson. Not a page was torn but the books had the well-worn look that only thousands of hours of lessons could show, the Rotarians said. Using Rotary matching funds Noun 1. matching funds - funds that will be supplied in an amount matching the funds available from other sources cash in hand, finances, funds, monetary resource, pecuniary resource - assets in the form of money and a favorable exchange rate to the Indian rupee Noun 1. Indian rupee - the basic unit of money in India; equal to 100 paise rupee Indian monetary unit - monetary unit in India paisa - a fractional monetary unit in Bangladesh and India and Nepal and Pakistan , the club has been able to turn its investment into $90,000 to buy school equipment, health care and science labs. The funding has helped an orphanage ORPHANAGE, Eng. law. By the custom of London, when a freeman of that city dies, his estate is divided into three parts, as follows: one third part to the widow; another, to the children advanced by him in his lifetime, which is called the orphanage; and the other third part may be by him of 3,000 children, supplied benches for six schools, and provided surgery for 80 cataract cataract, in medicine, opacity of the lens of the eye, which impairs vision. In the young, cataracts are generally congenital or hereditary; later they are usually the result of degenerative changes brought on by aging or systemic disease (diabetes). patients ages 9 to 70. ``It cost less than $100 per surgery, but we have saved them from blindness,'' said Lakshman. ``No one could have told us that our small gift could have such an impact,'' said Aldrich. ``Children learn their lessons, then work two hours a day to support their school. And it's the first time I met a school elephant to help with the tasks.'' The Lancaster West Rotary Club invests nearly $100,000 a year in local community and youth service projects and scholarships for graduating community college students. Rotary International encourages projects in other nations to support the cause of peace and world understanding. ``With what we are learning,'' said Swetland, ``we can show other Rotarians in Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, how to make a difference in new ways. India's schoolchildren schoolchildren school npl → écoliers mpl; (at secondary school) → collégiens mpl; lycéens mpl schoolchildren school are eager to learn. And as one child said to us, 'We intend to have 100 percent passing.' And together they do.'' CAPTION(S): 2 photos Photo: (1 -- 2 -- color) Left, Lancaster West Rotary Club members G.S. Lakshman, far left, and Cecil Swetland visit an orphanage in India. Above, a schoolboy holds his English textbook at an Indian school where the Lancaster West Rotary Club helped buy desks and benches. |
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