Persistent, devastating summer floods in Pakistan have prompted ShelterBox to make an emergency appeal for funds to aid those stricken.
SRC Rotary will be sending a $500 check, the latest in a years-long string of contributions, from combined funds of $331.85 from the club’s Clynk recycling program and the remainder from Rotarian Bill Dowd, the club’s ShelterBox liaison. If you wish to add to that total, you can do it online.
Since June, torrential monsoon rains and floods have inundated large swathes of Pakistan, dumping up to five times the 30-year average rainfall and impacting at least 33 million people, according to the Pakistani government.
More than 1,000 people — a third of them children– have died, and the death toll is expected to rise as flash flooding continues. Sp far, an estimated 200,000 homes have been swept away and another 450,000 have been damaged. Livestock, crops and orchards are gone, robbing families of their livelihoods.
“This is a calamity of biblical proportions,” UNICEF Pakistan Representative Abdullah Fadil told the BBC World Service on Monday of this week. “It’s worse than the 2010-2011 floods, and it now has impacted all the provinces in the country.”
Meanwhile, please make a point of continuing to participate in the Clynk recycling program. Bill has mailed out the necessary bar code stickers to a half-dozen club members as they requested this week.
To get involved, simply purchase green recycling bags — the only kind accepted by Clynk — at any Hannaford supermarket customer service counter, request the stickers from Bill, then just fill the bags with recyclable beverage containers and take them to a Hannaford. There, all you need to do is use the scanner gun to record the bar code and drop the bag in the chute. No sorting, rinsing, etc. required.
Southern Rensselaer County Rotary Club 