ROTARY DAY OF ACTION!!!

 ROTARY DAY OF ACTION

‘’Just walking in the rain’’……..blah blah sang Johnnie Ray

Well, that should have been our marching song as we walked the first leg of the Roman Wall from the Segedunum Roman Fort, up to Northumberland Street in town. And all the while carrying a big green ‘Shelter Box’ as part of our ‘Day of Action’ representing Rotary Clubs in the North of England. Rotarians, friends and family were walking the Roman Wall from Bowness-on-Solway on the West Coast to Wallsend on the River Tyne in the North East to mark this Rotary ‘Day of Action’.

Around thirty Rotarians, partners, wives, and friends set off from Segedunum at 10am on a wet Saturday morning, on the first leg of the walk from Wallsend. Walking up High Street West, along the length of Shields Road, (with a quick toilet stop at Morrisons), before crossing Byker Bridge and on up to New Bridge Street and into the bottom of Northumberland Street, where an advance party of soggy Rotarians had erected, in the pouring rain, a gazebo for the day. Here we gave out leaflets, coronation competitions, chatted and collected dripping donations for this worthy cause, but by about 2.30pm ‘ish, enough was enough and with friends and family we called it a day.

In all it took around two hours to walk the five-mile journey and on the day we managed to collect well over £200 from generous pedestrians to add to the daily collection, which enabled us to purchase another Shelter Box in aid of this international charity.

Shelter Box is an international disaster relief charity founded by a then fellow Rotarian from Cornwall in 2000. The scheme provides emergency shelter with other aid items, such as a tent, lighting, pots & pans, cooking utensils, stove, sleeping bags, camping utensils and even toys for children etc!!!
The practical contents enable families who would otherwise be homeless, to have some form of shelter having lost their homes to disaster or conflict happening anywhere in the world. It is possible, having purchased a shelter box to track its progress to its final destination, thus providing an educational geography lesson for those who wish it!!!

More info’ can be found on; https://www.shelterbox.org