President David's Chosen Charity

Rotary Club of South Foreland Meeting on 25/10/17

President David Gilchrist’s charity for 2017/18 is ‘Stand By Me’, an organisation committed to rescuing and caring for some of the world’s poorest children and doing whatever is needed to help them make the best of themselves.  It was started in 1995 when David Spurdle, having seen the terrible conditions at an orphanage in a bombed out Lebanese town in the civil war, gave up his job as a headteacher and found sponsorship for 60 children.  The charity now supports 10,000 children in poor communities worldwide.

At a recent meeting of the club Colin Norford, from ‘Stand By Me’, gave a moving presentation of its work in providing homes, education, health care access and food in three of its communities.  In 1996 David Spurdle came across a school in the Dominican Republic, a converted chicken shed providing places for 50 children; he particularly noticed a lively little boy who was 100^th on the school’s waiting list.  He found funding to build a new school and that little boy, Wilton, is now a surgeon.  In Guacomayal, a banana plantation in Columbia, the charity set up the Emmanuel Care Centre in 2005 in a community where wages are low, children are abandoned, domestic violence and child abuse are common.  Over 200 children are helped with basic needs and psychological help is given for domestic violence and child abuse.  A harrowing video of a mother’s account of her daughter’s abuse ended with her words ‘God bless Stand By Me.’

President David supports Bethany School in Bekoji, Ethiopia, which was built by ‘Stand By Me’ in 2006 to replace one small school room for 220 children.  He and his wife sponsored a child; when David’s wife Jane sadly died in 2009 money from her funeral, with further gifts, was used to build a girls’ orphanage called ‘Jane’s House’ next to the school.  The club’s aim is to raise enough money to rebuild and extend the school’s kitchen.  One indication of the difference made by the charity is that ten children from the Bethany school started university in September 2017.

More information can be found at www.standby.me/