Rotary Mission Challenge 7

Wed, Apr 15th 2026 at 12:40 pm - 2:00 pm

Krishna will enlighten us on 15th April

The speaker was Club member Krishnaswamy Bangarpet speaking about the Rotary Challenge Seven which took place in Sierra Leone in April 2006. Challenge Seven was an off-shoot of the Mercy Ship Project that deploys hospital ships to some of the poorest countries in the world, delivering vital free healthcare to people in desperate need. Krishna was one of a team of volunteers who worked on projects helping to rebuild Sierra Leone after the hugely destructive war there ended. He took medicines for a Fistula Clinic in a small hospital where the women patients were also given skills, learnt handicrafts, knitting and sewing, and were given a new set of clothes to return to their homes cured and empowered. The wives of the surgeons volunteered to run the local school. Other projects included much needed Water Aid in schools and villages, social clubs for war orphans, an Italian-run surgical centre making replacement limbs for the many people injured by mines during and after the fighting. Krishna was impressed by how happy and positive the people were considering the conditions they had to endure both during and after the war and the experiences they had been through, and by how delighted the children were to be going back to school.! He described his visit as an ‘an eye-opening experience’. Virginia Fowler gave the vote of thanks.