Our projects

• Brakpan, Gauteng
• RAWCS Project 44
• Registered Feb 2024
• Continuing

Siyabonga Skills and Self-Employment Project

In the East Rand of Gauteng, South Africa, we work with Siyabonga Africa, a registered non-profit running life-skills and employment courses for people living in poverty. The training covers four trades: fashion design and clothing manufacture on industrial sewing machines, steel welding and fabrication, commercial baking of bread and confectionery, and agricultural skills including greenhouse farming.

The aim is not relief but a livelihood. Someone who finishes the course has a skill they can earn from. Eleven fashion design students began training on 14 July 2025, the first class of that year.

Our project manager visited the site in October 2024, met the chief executive, and works with the Rotary Club of Benoni van Ryn in District 9400, our partner on the ground. Donations are tax deductible and flow through RAWCS, Rotary Australia World Community Service, into sewing machines, computers and course fees.

Clayton’s story: a hand-up, not a handout

Clayton grew up in KwaThema, about 60 kilometres east of Johannesburg, and finished Siyabonga’s baking course in June 2021. Afterwards he volunteered at a local pizza shop for nothing, to extend what he knew. In return the owner let him use the kitchen from 4:45 in the morning, before opening, to bake vetkoek, biscuits and cakes that he sold himself.

Siyabonga was impressed enough by his attitude to give him a new electric fryer and business training to set up on his own. In his home town you can now buy his baking at the Handyman Bakery.

The best thing about my little business is that it has made me believe in myself.

Clayton — Handyman Bakery, KwaThema

He joined Siyabonga Africa to sharpen his skills and build a fashion brand of his own. His goal is to open a stall, grow his brand, and make his mother proud.

Samukelo Bafana Khoza, 24, Kwa-Thema — fashion design student

• Rous Public School, NSW
• RotaKids
• Running

RotaKids at Rous Public School

We sponsor the RotaKids club at Rous Public School, where primary students run their own service projects. Their current campaign is koala conservation, and they publish it themselves in the Rous RotaKids Roundup.

The April 2025 edition, pictured, covers their visit to the koala rehabilitation centre and hospital, what makes koala habitat viable, and how the money they raise is spent. It is written and laid out by the students.

• India
• Water, sanitation and hygiene
• Delivered

Toilets for Girls

In some of India’s poorest communities, the absence of proper sanitation meant girls simply stopped attending school once they reached adolescence. The lack of privacy and basic hygiene was an insurmountable barrier to an education.

Working with local Rotary clubs and community leaders, we helped build toilet facilities at schools serving the most disadvantaged children. They were not just buildings. They removed the reason those girls were leaving.

One school stood out: beside a canal, serving children among the poorest of the poor, many without stable homes. They arrived each day in neat, clean uniforms, welcomed visitors warmly despite a late arrival, and sat patiently through the official proceedings. The contrast between the opportunities available to us and the daily trials they faced was humbling.

• Arusha, Tanzania
• Education
• Ongoing partnership

The School of St Jude

We have an ongoing partnership with the School of St Jude in Tanzania, which provides free, high-quality education to bright children from poor families. Its founder, Gemma Sisia, has spoken to the club twice, and our secretary visited the school in person.

It is the kind of partnership an online club can sustain easily: no travel is required to stay involved, and a guest speaker in Arusha is as close as one in Tamworth.

• Tamworth, NSW
• World Polio Day
• Annual

End Polio Now film night

For World Polio Day we screened The Traveller at Forum 6 Cinema in Tamworth, drawing around 60 people across five Tamworth clubs in support of polio eradication.

Polio is one of two human diseases humanity has come close to eradicating, and Rotary has been at it since 1985. The last mile is the hardest and the least glamorous, which is precisely why it still needs doing.

• South Africa
• Supported 2025-26
• $500 contributed

The Leafline Project

A $500 contribution from the club’s project account to the Leafline Project in South Africa, alongside our longer-running work with Siyabonga in Gauteng.

• Port Macquarie, NSW
• Joint fundraising
• Ongoing

Port Macquarie PCYC partnership

A joint fundraising proposal with Port Macquarie PCYC, taken to the board in 2026 and still being scoped. Our members on the Mid North Coast also support the Port Macquarie clubs’ Giant Book Sale.

• Dungowan, NSW
• Community event
• Handed back

Dungowan Village Fair and Motor Show

Our first signature project. Under the guidance of Past District Governor John Barwick, the club helped revive a local village fair. In its first year under our coordination it raised about $5,000, which gave a five-member club its first real standing.

Stewardship later returned to the local machinery group, which is the right outcome: the event belongs to Dungowan, and it is still running.

• District 9660
• Restricted fund
• Transferred to the district

Youth Insearch stewardship

During the charter handover from the Rotary Club of Tamworth North we inherited a restricted fund of roughly $70,000 supporting the Youth Insearch program.

Recognising how small the club was at the time, the funds were safeguarded and their administration transferred to district custodians, so the program kept the scale and oversight it deserved. Respecting what a donor intended matters more than holding the balance.