Of Suspension Bridges

02/28/2011


It was the last leg of the Volunteer’s Tour and we were on our way to Pokhara, the restful lakeside town made popular by the trekkers to the Annapurna Circuit and where many other trailheads begin.

While Sita, a visually challenged woman who was the first blind Nepali to complete her Masters Degree accompanied the group to Dhulikhel, Jayanti, the program officer of the Rotary Disability Awareness Campaign accompanied the group this time.

Jayanti’s story is one of sheer commitment to one’s desire to make something of oneself in a society that excludes the disabled. Her disability occurred at 2 years of age. She contracted polio and was sent to live at an SOS orphanage for children with disabilities and never saw her mother until she turned 20 and was released. Her family became the children and guardians at SOS Children’s Center at Djorpati. She has then reconnected with her family which lives in Danghadi, a district in the Western part of Nepal that requires a 15 hour bus ride and ½ hour rickshaw ride. She gets to spend the festivals with her family and currently lives with her sister Kalpana. Today she also attends the University and will complete her Masters in Mass Communications in the next 2 years.

The Disability Awareness Campaign precludes the employment of disabled personnel in every possible segment of this program. In the duration of this campaign, we have seen the people with disability (PWD) build wheelchairs, bookshelves, coordinate the activities of the awareness campaign, pose as models for all our media and advertising materials, write articles and commentaries in all Nepali news publications, participate in sports days and become beneficiaries of 25 projects that were developed by the Nepali Rotary Clubs partnered with District 5030 and other US Rotary clubs totaling an amount of over $250,000.00.

The trip to Pokhara included a short walk through a tiny village carved into a mountainside and connected to the main highway via a steel cable suspension bridge. Such an analogy of what people can do for each other, how a single construction enables a community to thrive and gain services for their health, education, medical, nutrition and opportunity to earn and participate in nation building. Everybody needs a connection, everybody needs to contribute and everybody can because we are all able!
Building Community, Bridging Continents!

Rotary can provide that connection, District to District, Club to Club, Rotarian to Rotarian! Building bridges and connecting communities!