Elaine Bunick and Adolf King, members of Rotary Club of Oak Ridge, are pictured with Ghanaians in the village where they led the medical and educational missions. (Submitted photo)
The Rotary Club of Oak Ridge is helping its hometown and communities in the world.
The club contributed $2,500, which was matched by a Rotary District 6780 grant, yielding $5,000 that financed the renovation of a room in the Oak Ridge Boys and Girls Club building. Anne Dunthorn, the club secretary and grant writer, helped Jennifer Pettyjohn, the chief and special officer of the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Clinch Valley, identify a District 6780 matching grant and prepare and submit the winning application.
Elaine Bunick, club member and endocrinologist in Oak Ridge, spearheaded the successful medical and educational mission in late July in the eastern African nation of Ghana. More than 1,800 patients in the village of Nkonya-Wurupong received medical treatment and used, or will use when needed, $250,000 worth of anti-malarial and other medications.
Repairs were begun to be made to the medical clinic there, donated computers were given to the school and clinic, and $150,000 worth of books and other educational materials were donated to the village school.
Other Oak Ridge Rotarians who assisted in the mission were Adolf King of the Rotary Club of Oak Ridge (along with his wife Carol, an Oak Ridge nurse, and their daughter, Renee King, an emergency physician who grew up in Oak Ridge).
Past RCOR President and Past Assistant District Governor Devrin Kuipers (now with the Sunset club) and his daughter Amanda joined Adolf King in helping with the educational mission. Dunthorn submitted an application for a Rotary Foundation Global Grant to help finance future Ghana missions.
Bunick met with key members of the Accra and HO clubs (Rotary District 9102 in Ghana), which are partners in the mission. “We hope to continue to work with the Ghanaian Rotarians on prevention and cure of malaria and worms in children and on educational, clean water, and sanitation projects,” she said.
In July, Immediate Past District Governor Jerry Wear presented a certificate of achievement to RCOR President David Bradshaw and Bunick for the club’s leadership in the Ghana mission, which began under the leadership of Immediate Past President Darrell Akins.
In a third piece of good news, Dunthorn announced that the Rotary Foundation awarded a Global Grant of $42,600 to the cleft palate surgery effort of the Heart2Heart Project of Mexico, in which RCOR participates.
The grant consists of Rotary Foundation money and financial commitments from District 6780, RCOR, and Rotary clubs in Mexico. The grant will pay for surgery supplies for children and the purchase of folic acid (B) vitamin pills for pregnant women to prevent the births of children with cleft palates. Surgeons from Mexico City will donate their time to performing the surgeries at a hospital in Metepec, Hidalgo, and the patients will come from the states of Hidalgo, Puebla, and Veracruz.
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