Pensacola Rotary Provides Desks for Indian Students

The Rotary Club of Pensacola, with the involvement of organizations in India, has helped to provide 485 new desks to ten government schools located in four different impoverished Indian communities. The desks will benefit 1,455 students.

“This was a matching grant project through the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International where Rotary Club of Pensacola joined with Rotary clubs in the Indian communities in what we believe is a really fantastic international project,” said Kathy Horton-Brown, International Projects chairman of the Pensacola club. “In India, government schools do not provide students with desks. In most cases, the students sit on the floor and it is difficult for them to write. They also can suffer neck and back pain from looking up at the instructor.”

The desks were delivered earlier in the year to the four Indian towns, which have high poverty and drop-out rates. Each desk seats three students.  It is the hope of The Rotary Club, that students will be encouraged to stay in school if it is well equipped.

“The idea, which we developed with our fellow Rotarians in the Indian communities, is that by giving students a more comfortable environment we could help them learn, decrease the dropout rate, and increase literacy, and in doing so, help lower the poverty rate,” Horton-Brown said.

The project is the most recent link in a chain of Rotary friendship exchanges between the Pensacola club and their Indian counterparts that began in 2005. Earlier, the exchange resulted in Pensacola Rotary participating in a matching grant project that funded equipment for a Rotary eye hospital in the same area.

“We are really pleased with this project and are currently planning a second school-desk project,” said Horton-Brown. “This exemplifies the international reach of Rotary and is something the Rotary Club of Pensacola is very proud of.”

For more information about Pensacola Rotary Club, click here.