CENTENNIAL PROJECT

 

The Rotary Centennial Hilton Special School Bus.

  

There is a unique special needs (read disabled) school in Fiji called the Hilton Special School. It is run by an honorary (but now elderly) member of our Club, Frank Hilton, who started it in 1972.

 

Frank, has been serving the seriously underprivileged from when he was the Principal of the Napean School for Crippled Children in Penrith in the 1960's.

 

The Hilton Special School has a role of 100 students with another 68 in early intervention.

 

These students are unable to travel by public transport, by virtue of their disabilities, and so they rely on the School's transport.

 

Our official Centennial Project is to replace one of the School's two worn out, +10 year old (please read, high maintenance costs, and frequently breaking down) buses that picks and drops children each school day.

 

We estimate that we will need to raise about F$80,000 in total.

 

We would expect our Club to commit to $10,000, out of our annual fundraising of around $12,000-$13,000.

 

We hope to raise another $40,000 from overseas Rotary Clubs, and place a RI matching grant application, so as to get $25.000, with the rest raised locally.

 

We plan to have the bus called (and displayed as) the Rotary Centennial Hilton Special School Bus, with the Rotary Logo, and a listing of major donors on both sides.

 

It will be not only a very well deserved project, it will be our way of rewarding Frank Hilton, in what may be his latter years, for the exceptional way he has served the community, but it will also be a way of visibly displaying Rotary's great work to the community and inspire potential future members.

 

More details of the history of the school and of the needs of the potential project, can be made available, and photographs and even video of the school could be sent on request.

 

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Yours in Rotary

 

Ray Paris

President

Rotary Club of Suva North