Local Rotary gets $300,000 grant for Cambodia project

Since 2005, the Rotary Club of Gainesville and locally run nonprofit organization Sustainable Cambodia have worked together to improve the quality of life in impoverished villages of rural central Cambodia's Pursat province.

They have established a school for children, funded the construction of wells for clean drinking water supplies and crop irrigation and helped bolster the area's sustainable food supply of with gardens and the donation of livestock to village families.

But their past ventures together have never had the one-time infusion of funds the groups just received — a $300,000 grant from Rotary International.

Richard Allen, the president and co-founder of Sustainable Cambodia and a member of the Rotary Club of Gainesville, said the majority of the money will go toward additional water wells in the dry region, where drought lasts some five months a year.

Drinking supplies, crops and the survvial of livestock all depend on those wells, Allen said.

"Water, over there, is the linchpin of everything that takes place," Allen said.

To date, Sustainable Cambodia has funded more than 100 water wells in the Pursat province. The grant money will fund 80 additional wells and 8,000 water filters to supply clean water to the region.

It will also fund construction of 800 new latrines, 20 community ponds for farming fish, raised gardens able to withstand floods, and road repairs in the Pursat's Kravanh district, according to a press release from the Rotary Club of Gainesville.

In addition to the infrastructure projects in Cambodia, the Gainesville groups have helped establish a partner organization in Cambodia — the Rotary Club of Pursat.

Elena Casson, chair of the Rotary Club of Gainesville's Cambodia committee, said that, working with the club in Cambodia, planning has already started on the projects the grant will fund so construction work will be able to begin by the end of the year.

The Rotary Club of Gainesville was one of 15 worldwide recipients of the rotary International grant. The local group had to pledge $30,000 in matching funds.