Past President of the Rotary E-Club of Brindabella, and District 9705 District Governor Nominee Rob Uhl joined Libby Bleakley and Mary Brell OAM (Rotary Club of Orange Daybreak) on a trip to the Learning Centre in Dili Timor- Leste to assist in auditing and evaluating. Due to Covid it had been three years since Libby, who founded the Centre in 2016 had been able to go back.
Upon landing at Dili airport Rob had a wonderful surprise! She was met by Brian Klau, who back in 2016 had a one-way youth exchange trip from his village in Timor to what was then D9710 and was hosted by the Rotary Club of Bega for 9 months.
In this time, he learnt English and was a wonderful exchange student before returning to his village.
Rob was in Timor in 2018 working on another RAWCS project at Klibur Domin, the Ryder Cheshire hospital specialising in Multi drug Resistant TB and Disabilities. Brian came from his village and worked for the 2 weeks with the team from the Rotary Club of Bowral-Mittagong, working on varying parts of the project and also acted as their interpreter. He worked with Rotarians Ian Langford and Les Vickerman on installing a new water system for the hospital and helped Rob scrub and paint the walls in the hospital kitchen. He then went back and finished school and last year he graduated as an Air Traffic Controller.
Brian has continued to give back and whilst the team was at the Learning Centre he spent his days off coming to the Centre and helping out. This included assisting the Centre manager Dede in putting the new industrial sewing machine and industrial overlocker (both with their own special tables) together for use of the ladies at the sewing centre. Brian stated to all that if he hadn’t been given the opportunity to participate in that one way exchange he might never have left his village!
This is the power of Rotary and its programs!