Kerrogie Elders
The one project that is synonymous with the Rotaract Club of Keroggie, and that is near and dear to our hearts is our Elders project. What started out as support to the elderly who have done so much for their families and their community has grown to become a very personal and loving project that RAC Keroggie has been supporting and watching it grow for the last ten years. It most definitely has been one of our greatest joys.
The project aims to help the elders of a community who lost their children to the AIDS epidemic and/or war. Because of this, they were the primary caretakers and gave their love and understanding to their grandchildren. As time went on, age began catching up to them, and they reached a point where taking care of their families and even themselves became a difficult task.
Enter Tesfa Social and Developmental Association, which has done a fantastic job building the capacities of our beloved elders and helping them stand on their two feet and walk with the dignity that they so rightly deserve. Rotaract Club of Keroggie seeing the amazing works being done and wishing to provide and support the old we partnered up with the association back in 2009 and the rest, as they say, is history.
Initially, the project aimed at helping the elderly stay under their roofs so that they do not go out begging to sustain their lives by having members donating money every month from their own pockets so that the elders may have a stipend to live off from and help finance their health care. This was later extended to spending significant holidays with them by having them break their frugal livelihoods so that they can indeed have a holiday experience and hopefully bring happiness into their lives.
In the Rotary year of 2013/14, RAC Keroggie saw the poor living conditions that our elders were living in and sought temporary solutions to see them through that rainy season and brainstorm on more permanent solutions. By partnering with our mother club Rotary Club of Addis Ababa and Rotary Club of Portsmouth, funds were raised to help with the desperately needed housing solutions and the project is now finished with our elders living peacefully and with remarkably better conditions than before.
The project, for us as a club, has evolved into a project that members individually invest their time and energy into to make sure it is continued in the future. Plans to make it a self-sustaining initiative are being drawn up and are being fine-tuned with the help of senior members of the community to make it happen. The Elders Project is not just a project to Keroggie; it has become our identity and who we are as members of the Rotary family. We will continue to help the vulnerable in the future, and we will make sure that they stand tall and proud once again. For they are owed this, and we must make sure that this becomes a reality.
