Spectacle collection a spectacular success
The Rotary Club of Rushden is now the centre for the collection of any unwanted spectacles in the local area with collecting boxes in various opticians, Rushden Lakes and many other shops in the area.
The spectacles are sent to SpecSort, a project run by York Ainsty Rotary Club for onward transmission to Africa, helping people who otherwise couldn’t access or afford glasses to see again, whether they be children now able to attend school or adults who can now work and earn a living. Well done to all who contributed!!
The SpecSort project, co-ordinated by Ruth and Colin Perrott, was launched more than 25 years ago.
Rotarians in York meet regularly to sort, clean and grade the redundant and unwanted spectacles and Rotarians from the UK go to the African countries where they run diagnostic clinics and fit the spectacles to the persons who need them. Optometrist Ruth Perrott MBE has visited the African continent on at least twelve occasions, providing spectacles and training facilities in The Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Tanzania and Senegal.
Over the past two years the Rushden Club have collected and sent 13,622 pairs of spectacles for onward transmission to Africa.
On Tuesday, March 4, Rushden Senior Academy in The Hayway received a visit from various ex-police and prison officers, magistrates and even an ex-convict.
The main point of the day was to get the Year 9 pupils thinking about the consequences of any future actions they might take and the choices they could have to make sometime in their future lives.
The Rushden Club had engaged the Prison? Me? No Way! Trust, based in Hull, to visit the academy to engage in various workshops.
The 180 or so pupils were involved in discussions about county line drug gangs, knife crime, experienced being ‘banged up’ in a mock-up of a prison cell and experienced the drama of a real life magistrates court with pupils being used as the actors in a make-belief drugs trial.
The reactions of the pupils, having taken in the advice from the various tutors, was one of open-mouthed silence and hopefully a determination to make the right choices in later life so as not to get involved in any illegal activities.
Rotarians were present during the day to monitor the activities of each group and witness, especially, the silence that reigned when the ex-convict was telling the pupils the story of his previous life with drugs and his subsequent rehabilitation back to a normal life.
The following week the Rushden Club was back at the academy who were hosting the annual Rotary Junior Schools’ Quiz with six schools taking part.
With nine rounds of five questions with each round being on a specific subject, the four members of each school team were a picture of concentration for the hour-long quiz with all teams doing very well.
There were several rounds of maximum marks with all schools showing a high level of knowledge perhaps even beyond expectations! The parents in the audience were suitably proud of their young offspring.
The winning team, with a success rate of 80 per cent, was the team from the Henry Chichele Junior School in Higham Ferrers with last year’s winners, Southend Junior School, coming in a close second with a creditable 76 per cent.