Rotary cash boost gives students a future

Greater Dandenong Rotarians raised more than $12,000 for school children in Tanzania.
The Rotary Club of Greater Dandenong – an amalgamation of the Dandenong and Dandenong South East groups – hosted The School of St Jude’s founder and a student at a dinner on Thursday 2 March.
Former Australian teacher Gemma Sisia opened the school 15 years ago and it today gives 1800 promising yet impoverished students access to free, high-quality education.
She received $12,157 in donations and gifts from the Rotarians, alongside student Winrose Mollel.
She graduated top of her class last year and was the first St Jude’s graduate accepted into university.
Later this year she’ll head to Trinity College in Connecticut, USA, to study aeronautical engineering.
Winrose grew up in a rural village where she helped her farmer father raise her younger sister after her mother passed away when she was in primary school.
Most girls in similar situations have to drop out but Winrose was committed to getting an education.
She walked 2.5 kilometres to school each day, shared a desk with five others and had no books, no meals and sometimes no teacher.
“Sometimes I got so hungry during the school day that I developed stomach ulcers,” she said.
“It was hard to study when there were no teachers and no books.”
“Being offered a scholarship at St Jude’s has changed my life.
“It has made such a difference and given me the assurance that I could achieve my dream which I never had before at my government school.”