The RORP Story
Great for kids and Great for the Environment
from Bob Allardice
The harvesting of playgrounds started with a cup of coffee. Whilst attending a Bendigo Bank Directors Conference in Adelaide, Peter Cribb of RC Flemington met with Eshantha Ariyadasa from Sri Lanka, who was staying with friends as he wrote up his PhD on Sri Lankan Social Services.
Long Story Short! His later request, five years ago, for a playground for a girls’ school became the genesis for the RORP program - Rotary Overseas Recycled Playgrounds. One playground has evolved now to over 70 being sent to Sri Lanka, Fiji, Tanzania, PNG, Tanzania, East Timor (Timor Lest), and the Philippines. Next month, another 10 will be sent to Nepal. Uganda is a new destination coming up. How fantastic is that?
The RORP concept has now spread to other Districts -D9780, D9790, D9820, D9510 and soon perhaps D9600.
The intricate details can be found at THISLINK.
For various reasons, RC Flemington now needs to let go for others to take over the overall management of this marvellous program - a bit like the baton relay for the 100 year celebration of Rotary in Australia. RC Nunawading, with a bit of prompting from Bob Allardice, has decided to take on running RORP Central - it is too good a program to let die. RORP Central provides advice to the other RORP’s and handles playgrounds mainly from Districts D9790, D9800 and D9810.
However, we need your help! We call on Rotary Clubs in our District to pitch in and help us make this program a long term success. We need two or three people in each of the many roles in the program so that people know they can have normal lives with backup for holidays, etc. We just need one or two people from each club to help us run the program. It’s just the usual stuff! – marketing, communicating, planning, doing – it’s what Rotary is good at. Who do we need? – Engineers, Accounting, PR/Marketing, Social Media, Admin, IT, caring souls, a bit of muscle every now and again, etc.
We also need the Clubs in each Council area to help us by taking (good) photos of the target playground, marking it up from the plans we make; picking up the components after the Contractor has pulled it apart, and delivering it to our Depot.
Does your Club have an overseas Project? Can a playground be added to it? Later on, we should be able to add other things that get replaced, eg basketball rings, soccer nets, fitness circuits. It really is just up to our imaginations.
Want to help? Call or email Bob Allardice on 0419 509 403 or boballardice@gmail.com