Local Rotary Club Delivers Water a World Away

Claudine came into Arlene Brown’s arms a helpless child born blind, a hole in her heart, orphaned and alone.

The 3-year-old’s legs were bone thin. Doctors in Rwanda, Africa predicted that she would not live long and would never make it through the surgery she needed to improve her eyesight. 

“I wanted her alive,” Brown, 81, said. “She is the story of why we are there.”

After nursing Claudine back to health, Brown said the small child miraculously received two surgeries for her heart and eyes. Today, she is a young girl dressed in pink, dancing, laughing, singing. Living a life no one could have imagined just a short time ago.

“She does it all,” Brown said. “If we have a miracle at Urukundo, Claudine is the miracle.”

Brown is a nurse who runs an orphanage for children in the Urukundo Village of Rwanda called the Urukundo Home for Children. It was established five years ago.

There, Brown houses, feeds and gives love to 46 boys and girls; oversees a farm, school and a residence; and now has a new system for gathering fresh water through a grant made possible with the Forest Hills Rotary and Rotary International.

Her daughter, , owns on Yost Boulevard in , making the connection to the local Rotary. Arlene recently visited the Forest Hills area. 

Access to clean water has always been a struggle for the home.

“The water was at the bottom of a mountain,” Brown said. “There needed to be a better source of water.”

Through an initial project with Park Forest in State College, two reservoirs were built—one at the bottom and another near the top. But then, electricity, an extremely expensive commodity in Rwanda, was needed in order to use the fresh water in an efficient way.

Solar panels were then discussed to generate the power needed to pump the water from the bottom of the mountain to the top, and that’s when the Forest Hills Rotary Club got involved.

Tom Nunnally of Forest Hills Rotary said the local club funded $14,000 of the project, Rotary District 7300 put in $11,000 and the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International funded $18,000.  

“Our club has spearheaded the ceramic water filter in Honduras and Haiti, but this was different as they had a source for clean water, but it was very inaccessable to the village where her Home for Children and school for the village is located,” Nunnally said. “They had planned to run power lines down to the spring at the bottom of the mountain, but that was too expensive and wire is easily stolen for its value. Solar panels and pumps were the way to go.”

The local club also partnered with the Kigali-Virunga Rotary Club, which oversaw the construction.

The home for children is funded by donations and sponsorships of children through an umbrella nonprofit in the United States called Hope Made Real. The latest support from Rotary has transformed the lives of not only the children at the home, but an entire village of more than 2,500 people.

“We have guards that stay there so nothing happens to the pumps and the panels do not disappear,” Brown said. “The water is pumped from the source to the top.”

Because of the solar panel system funded by the Rotary grants, the project is now complete and in full use.

“Thanks to Rotary here, life is safer for the children, safer for those who drink the water and pure water is hard to come by,” Brown said. “We are very blessed to have the Rotary.”

In her time coming to Forest Hills, she noted that the convenience of water and electricity in the United States is simply amazing. Adding a good source of water is just another step forward for the organization she started after working with children affected by the genocide in Rwanda.

“We live on hope there,” Brown said. “We’re making it real. It’s not just hope with nothing to back it up.”

In Urukundo, babies are found left in ditches, roadways and abandoned through many different horrific situations. Three new babies came to the home this month, Brown said, and they are brought in by policemen, villagers and anyone who finds them. Through the home and the school, along with the help of God, Brown pushes to change life for the children around her.

“Education is the key in Rwanda, because then it doesn’t have to go to the way things were before,” she said.

The Urukundo Home for Children always accepts volunteers who wish to travel there to help. Brown specifically is looking for people who can teach preschool children. In the future, she also hopes to open a clinic to help the mothers of the orphans, who often die after childbirth.

“It takes one person to step out, and others follow,” she said. “One person can make a difference.”

For more information, to donate or to get involved, visit http://hopemadereal.org/.