Nepal may be 4,500 miles away but Rotarians in the Deepings have shown that distance is no barrier when it comes to providing vital help and support for remote communities, Stamford-mercury reports.

In such a mountainous and unforgiving landscape, communities are inevitably more isolated than most and do not benefit from many of the trappings of modern life that we all take for granted.

But now life for the children at two schools in Nepal has been completely transformed thanks to the Rotary Club of the Deepings, with the club providing funds to help pay for solar power equipment to be installed.

The club has been working on the project in association with charity the Nepal Remote Villages Trust and, as a result of that joint initiative, some 500 children at the Janakalyan Primary School and Shree Simle High School in the Jaleshwari region of Khotang are to benefit in so may ways.

The arrival of solar power opens up a raft of new and exciting opportunities for the Nepalese students in those communities, enabling them to access e-books and modern educational material.

It will help to improve literacy levels at the schools, which in turn can lead to better job opportunities for the students on leaving school, and provide access to more information to help with improvements in other areas, such as healthcare.

And it won’t just be the younger members of the community who will benefit. The schools will be running adult education classes too, which means that the lives of the whole community will be greatly enriched.

Last year Deepings Rotary supported another community in Nepal, providing funding for NRVT to install solar power at Rhupangmare School in Lower Solukhumbu. Rotary contributed £1,000 to the total cost of £2,000 for that project, with £500 from club funds and a £500 grant from the Rotary Foundation.

Following the success of that inaugural project, the club decided to be even more ambitious this time. Securing a grant of £1,500 from Rotary Foundation (Rotary’s own charity), without which the project would not have been possible, the club contributed a further £1,700, making a total Rotary contribution of £3,200 towards the project cost of £3,350.

Rotarian Carl Midgley said: “It has been a privilege for our club to be able to fund this project and to know that we have been able to help two communities.

“The work of the Nepal Remote Villages Trust is quite inspirational and life changing and we are only too pleased to be able to support them in this
way.

“Through Rotary we do a lot of work for our own community in the Deepings, but we also feel it is important to extend that help to other communities in the world where there is a need when we can. That is what makes Rotary the organisation that it is.” Form StamfordMercury.