Stories

My colleague Heba Hamdan, who is an audiologist with a hearing aid company called GN Resound, organized the donation of 140 hearing aids, equipment and accessories for use in Samoa and the Philippines.

A few days ago, my wife Cristy and I drove to the offices of GN Resound in Macquarie Park to collect a large box full of these items from Heba. We will send them to our colleagues overseas who will fit them, at no charge, to deaf children. In Samoa, where we are working with the Senese centre for Inclusive Education and in the Philippines, where we work with the audiology clinic at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila. The clinic in the Philippines is run by students from the Masters in Audiology program.

Heba spoke at one of our Rotary meetings a few years ago about the problems of hearing loss and how hearing aids can help. Apart from her Master’s degree in Audiology, she also has a Master’s degree in Public Health and she provides audiological support for GN Resound customers.

As many of you know, hearing loss can have a catastrophic effect on the education of a deaf child. We have fitted more than 200 children with hearing aids in Samoa over a period of twelve years. A good example was a 15-year-old girl, who was noticed by a teacher of the deaf for the Senese centre, wandering around on the street on a school day. She was rather unkempt and rather depressed and had dropped out of high school, as she could not hear the teacher. She was tested by the Senese staff and on our next visit, we fitted her with hearing aids. We saw her a few months later in a smart School uniform, attending a high school with the help of a sign language interpreter. There are many similar stories.

On our visit to the GN Resound offices, Cristy and I were also able to tour the GN Resound offices and saw the latest state of the art custom-made earmould manufacturing lab. An impression of the ear is made by injecting soft silicon material into the ear canal, which is then scanned. The image is stored on the system, cropped and modified using computer-aided design software and sent to a 3-D printer, which produces an earmould. The system is very impressive, but is of course expensive, partly due to the health regulations, which regard an earmould as a medical device.

I learned to make earmoulds in the UK in the 1970’s, when we took an impression of the ear and carefully placed it in plaster of Paris. When the plaster of Paris set, the impression was then removed and the resulting cavity in the plaster of Paris was filled up with a mixture of liquid and resin to produce a Perspex earmould. It had to be carefully ground, drilled and polished. It was all too easy to produce a really bad ill-fitting earmould. It was amazing to see how things had moved on in the last 50 years.

-Philip and Cristy Newall

Our regular visits to Samoa to test the hearing of deaf children and fit them with donated hearing aids had to stop because of Covid, as flying to Samoa became difficult. Our last visit was in March 2020 and we left Samoa just as they began to close the country down.

Five Samoan children have been fitted with Cochlear Implants, as a result of initiatives by Next Sense (or the Royal Institute for Deaf children/ Sydney Cochlear Implant Centre, as it was). These devices are used where the hearing loss is so great that a hearing aid would not help.

Four of the children were implanted several years ago by Professor Bill Gibson (at no charge) and the devices were programmed remotely with help from colleagues in Samoa (one other child was implanted in New Zealand). These devices would have cost about $25,000 each (plus surgical costs) and need maintenance and spare parts. Part of the device is implanted in the child’s head but another part (the processor) is worn behind the ear, like a large hearing aid. As more than two years had passed since our last visit, one device was not working and all the children were using spare processors. Several of them needed the special rechargeable batteries and chargers, as well as other spare parts.

These children are all profoundly deaf and oral communication would be impossible without the cochlear implant. They would not be able to attend school without sign language support.

When I contacted the Cochlear Implant group at Next Sense, Kyle Chisolm of Next Sense responded and agreed to donate a large number of spare parts including the processors. If these parts were new, they would be worth about A$80,000. Fortunately, the devices used in Samoa were an earlier model cochlear implant processor and many Australian children have now been fitted with new models, so spare parts for the older models are available.

Cristy and I collected a large box of spare parts from Next Sense in Gladesville a couple of weeks ago, sorted them out and posted the devices in two parcels to Samoa. The first one has just arrived there.

It will make a huge difference to these children and we are very grateful for the generous support of Next Sense.

Our work in Samoa is supported by a Rotary Australia World Community Service (RAWCS) grant

-Philip and Cristy Newall

ROTARY AUSTRALIA REPURPOSING EQUIPMENT (RARE)

SENDS EQUIPMENT TO UKRAINE

By PP Philip Newall

This is the new name for HEERA, which itself was formerly called Donations in Kind.

On 23^rd June, Chris Johnson, Ed Strom and John Davidson of our Club worked at RARE, assembling two pallets of non-perishable pre-boxed medical items and creating packing list waybills. These were hospital beds, which needed separating, testing, matching to accessories and organising.

The pallets were addressed to the Ukraine and Qantas was taking them as free freight to Heathrow. From there Rotary has arranged road transport, which may go via Poland if it cannot be direct. 

As some members will know, RARE is a Rotary organization, which is, involves in collecting items of medical and educational equipment and consumables. These are stored, sorted and packed into containers and sent to developing countries. Great efforts are made to ensure that the items are sent to organizations (usually connected with local Rotary clubs) and put to appropriate use. The work in NSW is currently organized by an experienced Rotarian called Keith Roffey.

Our Club has been involved with RARE, which has a very large warehouse in Castle Hill and our Club has committed to helping out there on the fourth Thursday each month.

Cristy and I were unable to help on this occasion as we were out of town.

Our colleagues from the Club did a great job, and everyone should be aware of the ongoing commitment undertaken by some of our members. This shipment to the Ukraine, which as you all know is suffering so badly, is a great thing for our Club to be involved with.

As in previous years, our Club sponsored lunch at the Parramatta Mission on the 15^th of June. Members who volunteered to prepare, cook and serve meals were Tom Burke, Sophie Bayar, Ed and Nola Strom, Philip and Cristy Newall, Chris Johnson and his friend Gerald Willis-Jones. We were met by Chao Zhou, Volunteer Coordinator and Paul Moussa, Meals Plus Program Coordinator. 130 take-away meals were served, with the help of our volunteers, to the poor and needy.

Paul Moussa indicated that, whilst the donation of $2000 was very welcome, we can just volunteer to help preparing and serving meals. He would also welcome donations of clothes, books and DVD’s.

-PP Philip and Cristy Newall

A vibrant group of about 40 people from diverse professional and ethnic backgrounds, since 1972. We espouse Rotary’s motto of “Service Above Self” and live by Rotary’s 4-way Test.

Our focus is to serve humanity through our various projects in the local community, international, vocational, and youth programs. We build relationships with other community organizations, and charity groups.

Our projects are funded primarily by our Market at North Rocks which we manage every Sunday morning. Our voluntary work is done in the spirit of fellowship and fun.

Please join us Tuesday evenings, or on a Sunday morning at our Market.

An estimated 500 million people worldwide became infected. Many cities closed theaters and cinemas, and placed restrictions on public gatherings. Rotary clubs adjusted their activities while also helping the sick.

This is how Rotary responded to the influenza pandemic that began in 1918 and came in three waves, lasting more than a year.

The Rotary Club of Berkeley, California, USA, meets in John Hinkel Park during the 1918 flu pandemic.

Photo by Edwin J. McCullagh, 1931-32 club president. Courtesy of the Rotary Club of Berkeley.

Rotary and the United Nations have a shared history of working toward peace and addressing humanitarian issues around the world.

During World War II, Rotary informed and educated members about the formation of the United Nations and the importance of planning for peace. Materials such as the booklet “From Here On!” and articles in The Rotarian helped members understand the UN before it was formally established and follow its work after its charter. 

Many countries were fighting the war when the term “United Nations” was first used officially in the 1942 “Declaration by United Nations.” The 26 nations that signed it pledged to uphold the ideals expressed by the United States and the United Kingdom the previous year of the common principles “on which they based their hopes for a better future for the world.” 

Every hero has an origin story. “I was 10 years old when the entire journey started,” explains Binish Desai. It began with a cartoon called Captain Planet, an animated TV series from the 1990s about an environmentalist with superpowers. Desai can still recite the show’s refrain: Captain Planet, he’s our hero / Gonna take pollution down to zero! “That tagline stuck in my mind,” he says. “I wanted to do something to help Captain Planet.”

In early 1919, Rotarian Roger Pinneo of Seattle, Washington, USA, traveled to the Philippines to try to organize a Rotary club in Manila. Leon J. Lambert, a Manila business leader helped Pinneo establish the club. Several months later, on 1 June 1919, the Rotary Club of Manila was chartered and became the first Rotary club in Asia.

The club would be the only one in the country for more than 12 years. Eventually, Manila club members organized Rotary clubs in the Philippine cities of Cebu (1932) and Iloilo (1933). Iloilo club members then started a club in Bacolod (1937), and Rotary continued to expand across the country.