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Boxes from Launceston Boost for overseas businesses
The Rotary Club of Launceston has been busy Falmouth Rotary Club has just celebrated its fifth
with a literacy campaign supporting schools in year of linking-up with an organisation called Lend
Africa. Since January, more than 40 boxes of With Care, which provides loans for entrepreneurs
reading, text and reference books have been sent in developing countries.
via the charity School-Aid, making a total of 250
boxes since the project started 18 months ago, a To date, the Falmouth team has made 187 loans,
project made possible by the support of five amounting to almost £5,000 through partially
schools and other local organisations. funding 800 entrepreneurs. More than 2,600
family members have been helped as a result of
The club has also sent 150 pencil cases filled and, the loans, and almost 250 jobs have been
in some cases made, by the Inner Wheel, and created. Money that is repaid is re-loaned to other
hundreds of individual stationery items donated entrepreneurs.
by members of the public, which were collected in
the Rotary charity shop. Countries that have been aided by the scheme
include Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Ruanda,
Cambodia and Vietnam.
Grand opening of the library at Prudens One particular case was of a shopkeeper in
Pakistan (pictured above) who has a business
Then, with the help of a District Grant, and the renting out fuel drums. The club made a small
continuing partnership with School-Aid, the club loan to enable him to purchase more drums and
has now become a partner in the refurbishment of so develop his business.
a library in Prudens, a school in the South African
township of Soweto. Their contribution was the More from Falmouth Rotary and from
purchase of a computer and Libwin software, and www.Lendwithcare.org which operates microloans
the training of a librarian, as well as the purchase from the Care International UK charity.
of new books.This gave an enormous boost to a
poorly resourced free school.
