Pagosa Springs Rotary Club
On March 4, Pagosa Springs resident and Rotary Member Dave Smith embarked for the fourth consecutive year on a muti-week mission to the sub-Saharan, west African nation, Senegal, where he and another Rotarian from Canyon City, Colorado will help spread the gospel of science education.
Dave, formerly a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Nebraska, and at heart a dedicated teacher, is an example of Pagosa Springs’ remarkable cadre of skilled retirees, who may have dropped work-a-day cares, but have chosen to continue instead to employ their expertise in labors of love. Dave explains that several years back, he decided to find an outlet for his love of science and teaching in a country where he could do the most good, by proposing a Rotary program to aid education in a poor, Islamic country.
Senegal, a poor, arid, but stable country with a mostly Sunni population of 25 million on the Atlantic Ocean Coast of West Africa, emerged as the candidate, in major part because the national government was already on board with the importance of science education. The Senegalese government, having realized that experience shows a direct relationship between science education in local schools and an emerging nation’s economic development, had adopted a national policy that by 2025, 75 percent of its high school students were to be enrolled in science courses.
Dave’s project was to be designed to improve science instruction techniques in Senegalese high schools, so it was a good match with the need and thus attracted support from the International Rotary Foundation, which provides grants to help sponsor volunteer projects the world over.
With support of the Foundation, the Senegalese Project has an annual budget of $60,000, based on the combined contributions of the sponsoring Rotary Clubs in Pagosa Spirngs, Canyon City, and Aspen, which are multiplied by matching funds from the Rotary Foundation at a 3 to 1 ratio.
All funds devoted to Rotary Foundation supported projects are provided by donations by Rotary members, which are distinct from the local fund raising activities of Rotary Clubs.
For instance, in Pagosa Springs, all funds raised by the local club from the annual Barn Dance and Kentucky Derby Party and other activities, are used solely for local purposes, such as college scholarships and other support provided for schools of the Archuleta School District.
On this year’s Senegal trip, Dave will initially be accompanied by local Rotarian Kim Moore, plus two Rotarians from Canyon City. Dave and all other Rotarians pay for their own travel expenses.
The group of four will visit two urban and two rural high schools in northern Senegal, where they will attend English classes over a period of two weeks.
Dave explains that the Senegalese indigenous language is Wolof, although the official language in French. Students at the high school level have already learned French, and many start taking English when they reach high school. So the visitors will be able to converse with class members during their visits, he says, and help the students develop increased comfort with the language.
In addition, Rotarians will be carrying with them a large cache of used books, generally at the junior high reading level, collected by local Rotarians Lassie Olin, Ronnie Doctor and Marianne DeVooght. The books will distributed by the visitors to the Senegalese classes to help start an English reading library expected to be useful for years to come.
Read the entire story on our website http://pagosaspringsrotary.org