Eunice Rotary plans Guatemalan mission

The Eunice Rotary Club has a mission that will take some of them to the Third World.
About 30 St. Edmund’s Catholic High School students along with a few Rotarians will travel to Guatemala in Central America to “adopt” a community with the implementation of a “big project”.
While the club remains is local organization benefiting local projects and people, it obligated to the Rotary International creed, which includes dedicating the group’s effort for the advancement of “international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service”.
Michelle Richard, a St. Ed’s parent helping to organize the trip, said the main purpose of the trip is to implement a system of roof gutter systems and cisterns – which will help to capture and purify rainwater on Guatemalan homes – in an effort to provide clean, drinking water for impoverished families.
“We chose Guatemala for a couple of reasons,” said Richard at recent club meeting. “The first reason is that we have several exchange-students at St. Edmund’s who come from Guatemala. We are hoping that this is not the first and only trip to Guatemala. We hope to adopt a community in Guatemala so that for years to come we will be able to go back. Because, a lot of the times when you go on a mission trip, you never really get to see the fruit of your labor and to see the resources being used.”
Richard said that local fund-raising will begin with a “po-boy sale” starting on Nov. 10. She said that the groups are hoping to raise $10,000 dollars to bring to Guatemala as “project money”.
“Any money that we use in Guatemala has to come from our community, our families,” said Richard. “The Guatemalans don’t have any money to give us to work on our projects.”
She said that she hoped that the “garlic-jalapeno po-boys”will entice locals to contribute to the fund-raising effort by purchasing a $5 dollar ticket for each po-boy and to send a token of goodwill to Guatemala.
“Please buy more than you need,” said Richard. “Also if you would like to be generous enough to sell some of the tickets, we have about 500 more tickets to sell. We have 1,000 total.”
She also said that the initiative is seeking corporate sponsorship and any donations can be dropped off at St. Ed’s.
The Eunice Rotary Club donated $500 to the organized volunteers for their mission trip.
Tom Dischler, president of the Eunice Rotary Club, said that he hoped that this project will be a good, first-step in achieving the group’s international goals. He said that he hoped to send decals, or stickers, emblazoned with the Eunice Rotary emblem to stick on the Guatemalan cisterns in an effort to represent the local chapter in the foreign country.