News outlets — including ours — seem to be all-too-often filled with bad news with everything from incivility and callousness to corruption to inhumanity on the front page or on the screen. Which makes reporting on good news, showcasing people working together to help others, that much more uplifting. We brought you two such stories this week about local Carroll County residents and we feel it is worth recognizing those involved one more time.
Maryland Rotarians, including from Mount Airy and Westminster, are lending a helping hand abroad through a project in India. Nine Maryland Rotary Clubs pooled together for an international relief project in India to bring clean water to schools and a village.
“These projects are called Global Grant Projects, and they’re really big projects, typically $50,000 to $60,000,” said Mount Airy Rotary Club Foundation chair Paul Mahata, who grew up in India. “I know that area well, how much they needed clean water and sanitation. ... It’s a very poor area of India; the average income in that area is about two dollars a day, it’s a rural area."
The funding for the Global Grant Project is contributed by the nine Maryland Rotary Clubs, each of which donated $2,000, plus a Rotary District match and a Rotary International grant that brought the total to $52,516, according to David Highfield of the Westminster-based Rotary Club of Bonds Meadow. The project has been able to provide clean water to 14 high schools and one village so far, providing clean water to about 26,000 persons in total, Highfield said via email.
Mahata will also soon be venturing to the Bahamas with other Rotarians to aid in relief efforts in response to widespread damage and flooding brought by Hurricane Dorian.
“We are doing several initiatives,” Mahata told us. “From Maryland, we have a group called Disaster Aid USA. ... We go after one or two weeks and assess the needs of the people. It’s more of a relief operation and helping them probably build homes, or get them on their feet and give them some resources they might need to get back on their feet.”
Meanwhile, Deborah McCarty, a financial professional through the Mount Airy-based Gillis Falls group of Thrivent, worked alongside her team members and volunteers from other Thrivent groups to build homes for three families that have been impacted by the AIDS epidemic in Salima, Malawi. The goal of the trip was to provide the homes, but it was also to provide better living arrangements for the children of the families.
“There’s a great need for just appropriate housing compared to Western standards because the AIDS epidemic is still quite apparent in Africa, we sometimes forget here,” McCarty told us, noting that one of the people she helped was a mother who said she was HIV-positive and lost her husband to AIDS.
McCarty said Thrivent is the largest non-governmental sponsor of Habitat for Humanity and their partnership has been in place for 25 years.
“In Malawi, poverty is prevalent and about four out of five families live in substandard homes with little hope of ever being able to afford a decent house," according to a Habitat for Humanity International news release. “These conditions put the families at high risk of all kinds of diseases with leaky roofs making the house damp and mud floors attracting insects. There are about 1.5 million orphans and vulnerable children in Malawi out of a population of 18.57 million and approximately 21,000 new units are needed every year for the next 10 years to meet housing demand — this far exceeds supply.”
This is the third international trip that McCarty has gone on and she said she plans to do more trips like this one to continue to help people. "God has blessed me greatly, greatly in living in this country,” she told us. “Just a way of giving back, sharing His love.”