Rotary Community Heroes of Hope
Introducing "Rotary Community Heroes of Hope" - a podcast dedicated to showcasing the profound impact of Rotary in District 5330 and beyond. Join us as we explore the remarkable stories of rotary heroes and initiatives that are transforming communities and creating hope around the world.
Rotary Community Heroes of Hope
Empowering Communities with Clean Water: Rotary's Mission in Africa
Discover how a simple mission can transform entire communities as we sit down with Dep Thuani, a relentless missionary worker bringing clean drinking water to South Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya. Join us as Dep recounts his inspiring journey, which began in 2009, and continues with his ambitious goal to purchase a drilling rig by 2025. Through engaging with churches and businesses, Dep is on a path to revolutionize the efficiency of his clean water projects, and we discuss the potential role of Rotary in bolstering his mission. As Dep shares his experiences, we uncover the collaborative spirit that empowers Rotarians to turn impactful ideas into meaningful action.
Moving forward, we explore the roadmap for establishing sustainable drilling projects in Ethiopia with the aid of Rotary Global Grants. Tackling logistical challenges, we discuss innovative solutions like leveraging local resources such as Zuzu trucks to cut costs. Central to our conversation is the necessity of training local communities to become self-reliant in managing and maintaining drilling equipment. We also highlight the critical role of forming partnerships with local Rotary clubs in Ethiopia, emphasizing the importance of a Memorandum of Understanding to ensure solid collaborations. Together, we envision the economic upliftment these projects could bring and the steps needed to create an autonomous operation poised for future success.
Welcome to the Rotary Heroes of Hope podcast. I'm your host, judy Zolfakar, proudly serving as the current district governor for Rotary District 5330. Co-hosting with me is Jamie Zinn, our esteemed immediate past district governor. Heroes of Hope brings to light the remarkable stories of impact from Rotarians within our district. Our episodes shine a spotlight on transformative community projects taking root in our region and extend their reach to initiatives making waves on a global scale. Each story is a testament to the profound influence Rotarians exert on the lives of individuals and communities we are committed to serving. Join us in this inspiring journey. Dive deeper into the world of Rotary with us and witness firsthand the extraordinary ways in which Rotary touches lives, and witness firsthand the extraordinary ways in which Rotary touches lives and reshapes our world.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Rotary Heroes of Hope podcast, where hope takes center stage and the heroes are the Rotarians among us, turning vision into action. So we are having a wonderful guest here today. He's a returning guest to our podcast. Dep Thuani is here to talk with us this afternoon, jamie, about one of the most important things we do in Rotary right.
Speaker 2:That's right, clean water.
Speaker 1:Clean water. Everybody needs it. So, Dep, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about how your program is progressing and what new updates we have with your clean water projects?
Speaker 3:Yes, my name is Dep Dev Twani. I am a missionary worker for access to clean drinking water. I've been in South Sudan, I've been in Uganda, I've been in Kenya, and the only mission that can be there is to make sure that everybody could have an opportunity to have a clean drinking water.
Speaker 1:That's a pretty big undertaking, especially in those particular countries. How exactly are you going about that particular initiative?
Speaker 3:It needs a lot of work. When I did that for the first time in 2009, I did raise a lot of money and people behind me. They listened to my story and then they said we can work together. Most of my people that listened to me was business owner, leader in our community, leader in the Rotary International Club, and I raised money for a period of one year mostly one and a half years before I actually go to Africa and it was very successful because the fund that I raised managed for me to drill for those three years 2009, 2010, and 2011. I completed about 14 boreholes in so many locations.
Speaker 2:So last time you were on our podcast, you talked to us about how you started doing this because of your son. How you started doing this because of your son and you were working on some other projects and were planning on going back overseas again. Can you tell us since then and I think was that in May, that was in May, yeah, yeah, so back since May. Can you give us a little update on what you've been doing, how the Clean Water Project is progressing and how Rotary can continue to support you in this?
Speaker 3:Yes, since we met, I've been giving presentations to local churches, some group of business, group of business and the mission. The driving mission for me was to see that I can have another opportunity for 2025. If I manage the goal, it would have to be that I need to buy a drilling rig. A drilling rig would make the cost less than when I go there and rent it from other people. I've been successfully meeting a lot of companies, but the number of dollars that is being raised is still too far to reach the goal and the main thing for me now is that last year I did go to Africa for delivering a soil filter that killed 99% of the germs in the water.
Speaker 3:Gather support around those networks I have, including rotary, that if it should be possible for me to purchase right here in USA a drilling rig that may be able to be used over time. It's not only be used for a year, one year, two, it can be there for as long as it takes. Used for a year, one, year, two, it can be there for as long as it takes, and then that will help me to make sure I provided access to clean river water to more than the number I can accept it In a year? I would say maybe 10 to 15. Well, only to target the dry season, that has started in February and it ended up in April a year, and so that is a goal for me now to see that, if I reach it, 2025 would be another blessing year for those who do not have clean drinking water. Well, that sounds like a global project in the making.
Speaker 1:I think maybe have you talked to your club or club foundation and international chairperson on how you can work on a global grant.
Speaker 3:I haven't been able to get somebody helping me around and one of the ideas in my mind. I said let me wait until Judy takes the chair of the presidency of the governorship, Then I can find a way to get in, Because I also working five days a week. But I really need somebody that will lead me to the process of applying for those grants, knowing that my club will contribute, and also that will give me opportunity to go to the other clubs that are in the district.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what I think? You've got some powerful knowledge here in your immediate past District Governor as well as I.
Speaker 1:I'm not a grant specialist, however, I think this might be a really good learning moment of how a Rotarian comes to a club or to our district with a really good idea of something that's really going to impact a lot of people and literally save lives and bring clean drinking water to a community. And we can work together through this podcast and literally save lives and bring clean drinking water to a community. And we can work together through this podcast not normally what we do here at the podcast but work together through what is the process of a global grant. So why don't we take this as a learning opportunity? And I know, jamie, you've been through this probably more times than I, so what would Deb do to just start this process of getting a global grant together for his particular project?
Speaker 2:Okay. So yeah, it's actually a fairly simple process. So again, refresh my memory, deb, I'm so sorry I don't remember what club you're from. No problem, menifee. Huh, menifee Club, menifee Okay, all right, so well, that's good, because we're down here in Temecula, we are very close and I am more than happy to help you walk through the steps of how to do this.
Speaker 2:But obviously the first big step is you need to speak with your club president and your international service chair. That's where we start with, and I know, you know, the Menifee Club has not engaged in a lot of global grants. So again, I'm happy to help with that and I can certainly meet with you all three of you. District Governor Judy obviously would probably love to join as well, if her schedule permits. She's very busy, but we can meet up. And basically what we do is we start and we outline what the project is. Very simply, we already know you need to obtain this drilling equipment, and so what we do is we put down here's our objective, we want this equipment. And then we say how are we going to get there? We have to identify an international club who would like to be what we call the international host. And so if you don't have one in mind, we have a lot of connections here in the district that we can find an international club who would like to be a host. That's not a problem. Can find an international club who would like to be a host, that's not a problem.
Speaker 2:And then the next steps from there is simply we write up here's what it is, here's how we're going to go about it. We talk about any training that's necessary, any budget. You know we have to show how this project is going to be sustainable, the number of people it's going to impact. You know, again, I have sort of a little checklist that I can give you that goes of people it's going to impact. You know, again, I have sort of a little checklist that I can give you that goes through. Here's all the steps, here's all the questions we need to answer.
Speaker 2:And then what we do is we write up that grant and we put it out on the Rotary International website as a pending grant and then we get your club and the host club or international club to put those monies that they're going to designate onto that global grant. And hopefully we can get some other clubs here within our district who would like to help with that global grant, because they do have global grant funds as well that they can put to it, global grant funds as well that they can put to it. We then submit that to Rotary International, to our representative, who is Cecilia Walters, and then she will review that, have us make any changes that she feels is appropriate. We submit it back again and voila, they approve it and then the money gets distributed and we have to continue to do reporting to show how we've met the objectives that we've outlined.
Speaker 1:And I think there's a lot of key elements, because that was a lot but it's not a lot. I mean it's a lot and not at the same time. I mean you're going forward with a pretty big project. The project has to be a minimum of $30,000 or more. When you're talking about pieces of equipment, typically they're going to want to have those pieces of equipment sourced in the country or at least on the same continent of where the services are going to be, because transportation is typically prohibitive. Correct, we're going to get a drill and we're going to send it over there. It's also going to be about okay, what kind of training needs to be done for those that are in country to be able to run the equipment and maintain the equipment? Is there a place to store the equipment? So there's a lot of questions that need to be answered. But there's also a lot of people in our district. Jamie is one of them, helene Kalfas is another one, and the international chairperson and our Rotary Foundation chairperson. All these individuals are resources for you as an individual Rotarian that has a great idea.
Speaker 1:Here's the pathway where you can get to your solution, and it also comes into play once you have received that global grant number, then other clubs in our district can donate to your project.
Speaker 1:That's, you don't go around and actually start talking to the clubs until you get that global grant number because they can't give you the money or their DDF money, which is district designated funds. This is money that is sitting in a pool in a bank account that came to our district from three years ago, our Rotarians in our district giving to the Rotary Foundation. So it goes. We donate to the Rotary Foundation, it goes to Rotary International, sits in Rotary International for three years and then they send most of that money back to our district for projects just like this. And that's kind of how our organization runs. As total, the interest that is earned on those dollars that are sitting at Rotary International for three years. That's what runs our administrative services at the Rotary International level, which is what makes Rotary so strong, because we're not paying people out of the money that's being donated, that we're donating on a regular basis. We're using the interest to pay for. You know the very few offices we have and the very few employees we have.
Speaker 2:We are one of the largest nonprofit organizations in the world that has the least amount of administrative funds that are dedicated, that most of our money is going towards projects like you're describing we can put that out on a website which is rotarygrantsorg and that then people can go out there and you can even do it right now is you can go out there and search and say who hasa project related to water or who has a project in this country related to x, you know. So other people who may have a slight amount of funds that they don't know what to do with. They can call up your project and they can donate it to it as well. So lots of resources to be able to get additional funds for your project. So what is the amount of dollars that you're looking to get and how close are you to that?
Speaker 3:I hear a lot of good things that you guys are talking about and I appreciate all of you for the overview of how it could look like and how it's going to go through. I appreciate your volunteers to see if we can sit down together. One of the things that I already made a research is that the good thing is the drilling rate is right here in the USA and it has to be transported from here. I already find two different locations of my team that can be used over time, like having the capacity of up to 200 feet. Like you know, some drilling rigs are not competitive when they use an air filter. The one thing that I did use back in 2010,. It was bought.
Speaker 3:I buy the truck in Japan, then they ship it to USA and then we assemble it in Alabama where the Dibrop company. They put the machine into the truck, then they assemble it together to the one unit, so it took a long process. It cost a lot of money. I don't want to go that route because I've seen how it looks like. So this I think there is a potential to buy it here. Instead of buying a truck, we can get what they call a Zuzu truck that can be used together with a drilling rig and ship it from here right here, probably in LA, then it can go to Ethiopia, a location that we can pick it up from there. And ship it from here right here, probably in LA, then it can go to Ethiopia, a location that we can pick it up from there. Ethiopia is kind of having the course with Djibouti.
Speaker 1:This is kind of detail that we can talk about later on and you'll definitely need that detail, along with the financial obligation that would go along with that, because that's how the global grant gets started.
Speaker 1:You have to have those details in that budget together. It can't just be a wish or an idea. It definitely has to have some solid numbers to it, because that's what allows it to go through the process, to go through the process. And again, one of the really great things about Rotary and Rotary International and all of the grants that we do do throughout the world whether they be a global grant or larger grants we have a lot of large projects is that they're vetted pretty intensely so that there's a higher chance nothing's ever perfect but the higher chance of it being a success. So a lot of those questions that you're talking about right now is great that you're thinking about how this could happen, because those things need to be determined before your grant can be finished, so that has a higher chance of both being completed as well as being sustainable once the equipment gets to where it needs to be, and how it can be maintained as it goes through the process of drilling those wells for the various villages that you're talking about.
Speaker 3:Right, and one of the questions that you asked me is how much the budget should localize. You know, roughly the drilling rate is probably going to be $10,000. But the cost of putting the rig from here through the ocean, that may cost something that I'm not sure what it's right now, because back in 2010, it can be like $5,000 per one truck that you loaded into the, into the, what they call a shipping company. So there's a lot of things that we can discuss in detail, but the main thing for me now is that I put myself into the test because of my son that passed away, and as long as I'm here in this country, I will still talk about that and taking myself back to the country, also to be a part of the success and the training, for those who receive the thing would be educated so they can use it according to the safety that we're looking for, and then that would allow me to come back again for another year to continue drilling when we have the drilling rig over there.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's going to be a real key point in your global grant to show the sustainability by not having it be reliant on you to come back to that country to continue to drill, but to teach and show those individuals in that country how to do the drilling. And you know I mean essentially we want to make them autonomous so that they can do it on their own. You know obviously contributes to the economic development there. It contributes to them being able to have jobs, all kinds of things we're doing through that. So keep that in mind as you're thinking about your project, as how we can push this so that they become independent and sustainable on their own.
Speaker 3:That's good, yes, indeed. Independent and sustainable on their own that's good, yes indeed. And also, you were talking about the host country. I met with a group of Rotarians in Addis Ababa, ethiopia. They have a very good club. I met with the president, I met with the new president right now, and they all are willing to say we can work together. You know, this would be an addition to whatever you guys already researched, you know, since the target location and the location of the host country for that club would be very easily accessible and they are willing already to say we can work together with them.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's great, I mean, and we would, you know, we could be District 5330, and your club would be the host side and they would be the international partner. Actually, the first, very, very, very first step is solidifying that relationship and creating a MOU, so that you identify what each side is going to do, and then from there you start building the global grant and putting in all the other aspects.
Speaker 1:And that's a memorandum of understanding.
Speaker 2:Again, I think there's probably some templates that are there that can kind of I have a template for you to to map that out.
Speaker 1:So we appreciate you coming and joining us. This has been a fun lesson on how Rotary Global Grants work and we hope that, uh, you're able to make those connections work with your club, work with your partner overseas and be able to put that together and once that's completed and you're off and running and you've got that drill where it needs to be, maybe then you can come back and have a chat with us. How does that sound?
Speaker 3:It sounds great. And also to let you know also, judy, you already met with George. Yep, george is the new president for my club and he's already well committed, and I will just have to have another one-on-one conversation with him and also, if you have the opportunity, to share our discussion with him on the podcast, that would be lovely so you know what we are talking about, and and also to see if we can have another time to sit down in detail so I can benefit from your explanation of the thing that I need to do, and then from there we can see if the engagement of speaking to other Rotarian would be utilized in time to come throughout the year.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well, one step at a time. That's the key right.
Speaker 3:We got to go one step at a time.
Speaker 1:Make sure we got everything in order so that we can help you with your project. So thanks again for joining us today. We appreciate it and we look forward to talking to you more about it at a later time. Have a great day.
Speaker 3:Thank you, judy. Bye-bye, you guys have a wonderful day, you too. Bye-bye, bye-bye.
Speaker 1:So that wraps up this episode of Heroes of Hope. We are so happy that we have an audience out there listening. We want you to subscribe, share and tell your friends about the Rotary Community Heroes of Hope, because that's how we get the word out about.