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Contact: Brian Dunphy, (803) 920-4751, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
During the September 10th meeting Club Treasurer Ed Kellet presented a check to club member Steve Rayl for $4,932.40 which represented the proceeds from the 2008/2009 Gift of Life collection from our club. Rayl serves as the treasurer for the District Gift of Life program. (Keep buying those door prize tickets every week at the check in table!)
Summary of the District Gift of Life presentation made by Pat Campbell on Thursday, July 23, 2009.
Submitted by Diane Howard
If you missed our July 23rd meeting, you missed an excellent presentation by Pat Campbell regarding the District’s Gift of Life program. After being in the club three years, I think I finally understand what the Gift of Life is and why I should buy door prize tickets every week! I learned that our District was the SECOND Rotary district to start a Gift of Life program back in 1986. (The Long Island, NY District was the first.)
Over the past 23 years our district has helped 125 children from about 50 different countries including places like Vietnam, Ethiopia, Panama and the Philippines. Worldwide at total of 35 Rotary Districts have helped over 10,000 children since 1986. What a difference ROTARIANS make in the world!
To explain what the Gift of Life program does very briefly, we bring children who need surgery from third world countries. They come to the US for what most of us would consider “routine” procedures, but these procedures are not available where they live. They have conditions that if left untreated will cause them to die at a very young age or they will live with a staggering disability that will decrease their quality of life and in many instances ostracize them from society and prevent them from going to school.
The Gift of Life program brings the child and a parent or parents to one of the six hospitals in our District that we have contracts with and they include: Palmetto Health Children’s Hospital in Columbia, MUSC Children’s Hospital in Charleston, St. Francis Hospital in Charleston, Hilton Head Memorial, McLeod Children’s Hospital in Florence and a hospital in Myrtle Beach. Our District provides several host families usually about three who agree to host the child and parent for about two weeks each. The length of stay for each patient varies depending on the kind of procedures they have done.
This program is a separate 501(c) 3 funded mostly by Rotarians, yet only 30 of the 70 clubs in our District participate. (And I’m sure glad that our club is one of them!) Over the years they’ve garnered some corporate support. In addition to Rotary clubs in the District, all of the 42 Interact Clubs (high school Rotary clubs) in our state raise money for our District Gift of Life program. The Interact Clubs hold bake sales and car washes and raise $12,000-$15,000 annually and the Gift of Life program is well represented at the Interact convention held each year in February.
We should all be very proud of the long association the Spring Valley Rotary Club has had with the District Gift of Life program. Brian Dunphy is chairing our efforts this year and is working with a contact in the Five Points Club with the hopes that jointly we can host a child from Panama in the coming year.
For more information go to the Gift of Life International website at: www.giftoflifeinternational.org.