Ellsie Hewer - All Hands

A thoroughly enjoyable evening and an illuminating talk, very ably and pleasantly delivered by 'one of our own'.  Ellsie, being of Welsh extraction, at one time proudly represented Wales at squash.  Also likes helping people, so a special Hewer, Jones breed.

On 30/4/2015 she went to Kathmandu in Nepal with All Hand Volunteers UK, in emergency, to help out after the first earthquake, 7.8 on the Richter scale, very nasty indeed.  They arrived 72 hours after the event, an incredible achievement.   A vast amount of damage was shown on her presentation of collapsed buildings.  The epicentre of the earthquake was between Kathmandu and Pokara.  She experienced the horror of multiple aftershocks and then a month later yet another major earthquake of 7.3 magnitude.  Thus a lot more devastation and massive loss of life with many, many seriously injured inevitably resulted from all this trauma.

Of course the buildings, mainly stone/ brick, were unable to withstand this in many cases and so Ellie set to with some seventy mates to clear sites and carry out rubbling - saving useful stone and bricks. There were 250,000 buildings down, including 5000 schools!  Refugees galore!

They worked like trojans every moment they could and rebuilt 50 houses, and saved a further 100 buildings, having cleared the bad ones.

Ellie and her All Hand Volunteers then set out to raise more funds, making $30,000 by climbing steps to the equivalent height of Mount Everest. This enabled them to rebuild three schools at Newakot, for some 8,000 children. Also they cleared a wrecked hospital site - the locals rescued some kit like rusty beds.

Club's £500 donation to All Hands helped rebuild two schools. Chicken wire/brick/plaster walls for one, and the base concrete slab for the second at Singapot.

Ellie's plan now is to go and help in Greece at the refugee camps and then on return study for a degree at the Open University.   Well I reckon Ellie is making her mark in life in a remarkable way and she thoroughly deserves Rotary Severn's applause and congratulations for what she has achieved so far.  Bon voyage !

Peter Burton