Since Rotary was founded in February 1905 in Chicago, the organization has expanded to meet the world’s needs in terms of charitable outreach across many geographies. Perhaps one of the lesser known arms is Rotary Australia World Community Service Ltd (more commonly referred to as RAWCS)
Since 1987 RAWCS has worked in harmony with the Rotary Foundation delivering humanitarian aid through individual Rotarians and Clubs by offering means of Tax Deductibilty.
In addition, RAWCS provides back-end systems and project services to all Australian Rotary Clubs for project accounting, donations and fundraising support. These services are overseen by the Australian District Governors who are the RAWCS Ltd members.
In the last 12 months, RAWCS has processed AUD$ 32M in donations. Much of the money has gone to support volunteer work teams for Rotary projects undertaken locally, nationally and internationally.
A number of our Club members have participated in various RAWCS projects overseas, particularly in Vanuatu, and East Timor. We always welcome other Club members to come to our weekly breakfasts to share their RAWCS experiences.
On Tuesday January 19 we had a most fascinating woman, Sue O’Neill, who is a Club member of Rotary Brisbane Waters, near Gosford. She was not able to make the lengthy trip by car so, she joined us via Zoom.
Sue, working through RAWCS, has been the soul and inspiration of a primary school in Jinja Uganda on the shores of Lake Victoria. The school, named appropriately Divine Mercy, has grown in only a few years from 50 students to more than 300 and from several classrooms to an entire complex.
Each year RAWCS recognises the Rotarian judged to have been its “Rotarian of the Year” within NSW & ACT. Recently, the award went to Sue who has participated in well over 50 RAWCS volunteer overseas trips. As she tells it, it all started when she made it her mission to help the people in a village in a remote area of the Papua New Guinea Eastern Highlands Province which was without a school for more than 20 years.
The sad reality is that the region was plagued by decades of tribal violence. Sue was instrumental in bringing lasting peace and harmony to the region. She made the village a major project, initially working with the community to build and staff a school for approximately 400 students before establishing a village clinic, a well-equipped library, and a justice centre.
Sue’s passion is to improve education and health in developing countries. In more recent times she has expanded her humanitarian aid effort and now works extensively in East Africa and Cambodia. As she puta it, “every person is entitled to basic education and primary health care and these cornerstones will provide the foundation for sustainable, social, economic and cultural change”.
Sue epitomises everything good that Rotary is and does.
Any Rotarian who interested in volunteering may review the many hundreds of projects listed online and submit an application: https://rawcs.org.au/volunteers/
