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Friday, November 30, 2007

Arrival in Pakistan

Arrived after a 35 hour trip. I had to collect my luggage and check in again in Bangkok. Yikes, even with the new airport, it took me 2 hours to get through immigration. By the time I got out, my luggage had been sent to the "lost luggage dept".

Landed in Lahore with the first rain of the season. Immigration was very fast. Maybe that was because 6 of the 10 officers were women! Picked up luggage and was out of the airport within 25 minutes.

Today the air is clean and the ski is blue! Musharraf is no longer part of the army and elections are on Jan. 6. Life carries on for all here and there is no danger, honest! Much of what previously heard in our press was not know by the general public here due to the press black out.

Tonight I went to a joint meeting of 2 Lahore Rotary Clubs. Tomorrow I go so some hospitals and schools which were the recipients of previous Matching Grants.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Map of Pakistan


On 29th I will land in Lahore.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

visa approved

My visa finally arrived and I will depart for Lahore on 28th Nov.!

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Salem News, Nov. 13,2007


Salem News



By Steve Landwehr , Staff writer


IPSWICH - If all you knew about Rotary International was gleaned from attending a club meeting, you might come away thinking its members a bit daft.They don't have a silly handshake, but they do have Happy Bucks, an allotted time when members take turns dropping a dollar into the club coffers for anything, such as the success of a child in school or thanks for a beautiful sunrise.Then there are the fines. Just about anyone can be slapped with one at any time for telling a bad joke, paying someone a sarcastic compliment or simply because one fellow wants to jab the other fellow.


Then you meet someone like Ipswich Rotarian Rachel Williams, and you begin to understand why more than 1.2 million people belong to the world's first service club. When Williams decides to focus Rotary's powers on people in need, she thinks nothing of reaching halfway around the world to do it.Williams is scheduled to head to Pakistan at the end of the month with $12,000 raised through a variety of Rotary sources that will be used to complete the resurrection of a school destroyed by the 2005 earthquake that devastated the country. Some of the money was contributed by Rotary's elementary school program, Early Act, at Winthrop School in Ipswich.


The 45 children in the Peace Model School where Williams is headed in Muzaffarabad, Kashmir, are all younger than second grade."The older kids all died," said Williams, who visited the country shortly after the quake. It struck during the school day, and an estimated 95 percent of the district's schoolchildren - an entire generation - were killed.Of more than 9,000 schools that were destroyed by the earthquake, only about 400 have been rebuilt.


Following a heroWilliams has her eye on a larger goal than this one school. She hopes to follow in the footsteps of Greg Mortenson, an American mountain climber who built schools in Pakistan after he saw the plight of children in the country and chronicled his journey in his book "Three Cups of Tea.""He's my hero," Williams said. "I want to do that in Pakistan."And why stop there?"If each Rotary club adopted one school in a troubled area, it would be huge," Williams said.Just this week, Williams asked her fellow Rotarians for help with another problem.


A Pakistani camp was built as a safe haven for refugees who left Afghanistan when the United States began its campaign to rid the country of the Taliban. The Pakistani government recently shut down the camp, and many of the refugees fear returning to their homes because the situation there is so unstable.Williams is asking the club for $1,000 to help the refugees get settled before the coming winter.


"I think it's important we do these things in troubled parts of the world," Williams said.Williams will be flying into a country in turmoil. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency a week ago and gave his government wide latitude to crush political dissent. Thursday, he had former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto placed under house arrest.The country has also been rocked by militant Islamic violence, with bombings targeted at military and government officials, and clashes between government forces and supporters of the Taliban.But Williams said she is not concerned for her own safety.'Never afraid'"I've never been afraid in Pakistan," she said. The local Rotary club has always kept her out of harm's way, Williams said.


Her fellow Rotarians asked Williams to get the club more involved internationally several years ago. She was a good choice, since she had lived in Singapore for 20 years before moving to this country after she got married in 2004.She and her husband, Fred DeNapoli, asked wedding guests to donate money to Rotary in lieu of presents. Williams used half of the donations to fund a clinic in Pakistan.During her years in Singapore, she traveled to Pakistan several times each year to visit friends, and she has forged a strong relationship with the Rotary club in Rawalpindi, a city near Pakistan's capital, Islamabad."It's a wonderful place," Williams said of Pakistan. "The people are so dynamic. I'm never in any danger there," she said, and added with a smile, "The most dangerous thing is the traffic."


If you want to help the effort to broaden education in Pakistan, send a check, made out to Ipswich Rotary (label check : Peacemaker) and send to PO Box 543, Ipswich, MA 01938. If you would like to assist Afghan refugees go to afghanwomensmission.org.






EVERY CHILD HAS THE RIGHT TO AN EDUCATION.
As International Chair of Ipswich Rotary Club, I am pleased to announce the approval by Rotary International of a Matching Grant application to assist the Peace Model School in Muzaffarabad, Azad Kashmir, Pakistan. This Matching Grant is the second partnering of the Ipswich & Rawalpindi Rohtas Rotary Clubs which will come to a total of US$12,075. The Ipswich Club, assisted by Winthrop Elementary EarlyActers, is putting up $3,000 to be matched by Rotary District 7930. This district consists of 47 clubs in the Boston area and northeast Massachusetts communities The Rawalpindi club will put up US$1,050. Added to this total will be the US$5025 from the The Rotary Foundation.

The Peace Model School was started by a group of volunteers lead by journalist Saeed Siddique of Muzaffarabad and built by an NGO from the Czech Republic. The new grant will supply furniture, books and school supplies, uniforms, school bags, a computer lab, a playground as well as a school bus.

Students in the school are made up of various faiths. Many are refugees from the Kashmir border conflict as well as the terrible earthquake 3 years ago. The earthquake caused 99% of the schools to collapse, while school was in session, killing 20,000 children. An entire generation was lost. Of the 9200 schools that collapse, only 400 have been replaced. Thousands of fundamentalist madrassahs have sprung up in their place.






For our children’s future we must “wage peace” by fighting ignorance with education. To promote peace through education, I am launching a program to assist schools in the areas where many of our international problems originate; Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Did you know that 9200 schools collapse in 2004’s horrendous earthquake in Pakistan? It was the morning of a school day on Oct. 4th that saw almost 20.000 children die under the fallen buildings. A whole generation was lost in one day. Only 400 hundred of these schools have been replaced but thousands of Madrassahs have sprung up in the refugee camps.



Did you know that the Taliban grew up in madrassahs and were educated by men who were raised in a war and had little or no education? In Islam, "Heaven is at the soles of your mother's feet". You can't go to heaven unless you do what your mom tells you. The Taliban were raised without mothers or sister and taught by teachers who were angry and often violent! This is not an excuse for them but needs to be a lesson for us : REAL SCHOOLS ARE ESSENTIAL for a civilized society.


The U.S. is known for its education and we need to reach out and share it!
NOW more than ever…
your world NEEDS YOU!

Much of the developing world wears the face of violence and destruction. We are losing the hearts and minds of our fellow man.

Of the worlds 6 billion people, 25% are illiterate. 70% of these people are in 10 countries, 7 of which are Muslim. We can change this. The key to peace and understanding is education. Lack of education and opportunity breed ignorance and misunderstanding.

It is not about fighting terror, it is about fighting ignorance.