Rotary District 9560 DG Partner's project for 2021-22 brings clean, filtered water to 1560 secondary students over 2 campuses.

Woohoo! I want to THANK the whole District for supporting the Project I selected as the District Governor's partner for 2021-2022. You have made it happen, and empowered the Rotaract Club of Manatuto and the Rotary Club of Dili to bring change to the lives of students in these schools in Manatuto.

The final amount raised is $90,114.85, as confirmed by Pam Gregory, Assistant Finance Officer in D9560.

The Mobilise for Manatuto Raffle held in conjunction with the Conference was very well supported. Noni Smith has finalised the moneys raised on the Conference weekend, and those tickets sold earlier by clubs and banked. We raised $7390 which was added to the project. What a wonderful result. A special thanks to Noni and the 19 clubs who elected to take and sell the raffle tickets, and to all Conference attendees.

We have a very productive bore bringing water up now, with good water flow per litre and going down 60 metres which should drought proof it. "The Rotaractor and Rotarian observation in Timor is that the water bore result process 95% time duration of water volume scale 1 hour is 3,200 litres,  multipulate 5 times equal 16,000 litres water, " reports Elsa Graca.

We have a good quality pump that has been shipped from Darwin to Dili purchased by the Rotary Club of Litchfield-Palmerston, and it will have to be transported to site and installed. Successful handover of the water pump with Judite Martens, Rotary Club of Dili and Rotarians Helping Timor officer, was late in May. Many thanks to all, in particular to Sally Lay, who took the pump over. AG Ray Fauntleroy now needs to get the cables for the pump over there, of which the parcel is twice as large and heavy, about 10 kg. Judite will hold the pump in the Rotarians Helping Timor store until Ray can get the cables over, as the pump and cable has to be reconnected by an electrical specialist in Dili.

The reinforced concrete tank stands have been completed, but there is a 1 - 2 week intentional wait to allow and ensure they are cured (I hope that is the correct terminology) before the tanks can be placed on top. The three tanks are been manufactured by the Roofing Plant at Bacau. Rotary previously owned and operated that entire facility at Bacau for many years, before passing ownership to local NGO Don Bosco. 

(In 2000, the Rotary Club of Doncaster [RCD] sought to establish a steel rolling mill in East Timor to assist in the roofing recovery program following the devastating destruction of infrastructure at the retreat of Indonesians from East Timor. The Rotary Club of Melbourne [RCM] assisted with finance for the purchase of an additional purlin mill.)

Once the tanks are in and on their stands, we will begin to install the underground pipes which are already on site. These will transport water from the bore tanks directly to the two schools. They need to dig channels for this first.

We have asked Betty from Dili Rotary to ensure that we purchase a high quality water filter for this system, as we now have the funds available to get the best ones we can. We have told her there is enough money to get one that has a high star rating and comes with some training.

The last meeting of Rotary and the Technical School in Manatuto saw them request a green house with small water sprinklers to support the agricultural  program in their curriculum, and Betty has now got a couple of quotes for this building and system. It will have to be hooked up to the tanks for water. This will mean the students don't have to carry water up in buckets from the water course below. 

We are investigating where we could have roof guttering made, and ordering another tank to catch and store rain water in the wet season. We are able to move forward with this, with the money the District project has raised. That was what was spoken about at the last zoom meeting 3 weeks ago between Ray, Betty, Martti and myself.