Overview

General

In the last 20 years, the Rotary Club of Patong Beach realized countless projects. Especially after the devastating Tsunami in December 2004, we realized projects all over the region to help the community. The scholarship program started in 2005 after urgent needs such as dwellings, fishing boats, food, and clothing were met, is still running, and can give long-term scholarship funds to worthy students to keep them in school.

We are only able to display a few projects on this webpage. For more information visit either one of our long-running projects pages for the Water Safety Program and the Scholarship Program or download our 20^th Anniversary Booklet.

New projects 2021/22

Our members are interested in a broad variety of topics to help our community which result in a diverse list of projects. New this year is engagement in animal projects e.g., supporting the Elephant Eco Camp with funds and ideas for new income streams during covid.

Also new for Rotary overall and for our club are environmental projects e.g., sustainable beach cleanup, sponsoring plastic collection boats and coral reef restoration.

A selection of realized projects

Feed Phuket

When the COVID-19 lockdown began, there were people in Phuket who didn’t qualify or were abandoned with no way to reach out, no money, no support, and no end to their starvation insight. There are hundreds of thousands of people, previously employed or sustained from the tourist industry, in urgent need of help. Feed Phuket, together with our club to keep the hope alive for thousands of families waiting out the restrictions and border closures that have destroyed their livelihood and chance to feed their families. Our Rotary Club with the "Feed Phuket" organization is helping the poorest to survive until the economy picks up and tourists coming back. We also need to say a big thank you to all our donors who donated a total of far more than 1.3 Million THB, whereof one single donation from Switzerland accounted for 650,000 THB.

Dental Clinic

We conducted two dental clinic projects together Newport Beach Sunrise Club and Ayuda International together with the Patong Hospital and provided more than 750 Phuket children with free dental care. Newport Sunrise Rotary Club brought 50 qualified dentists and dental students, as part of the Ayuda Mission, who are a strategic partner in the club’s Bacchus Doc in a Box programme. The focus of the project was to bring together all the schools, kindergartens, child-care centres and special centres to ensure the children have a high level of health and welfare.

Water Sanitation & Purification

Access to water and sanitation are recognized by the United Nations as human rights, reflecting the fundamental nature of these basics in every person’s life. Lack of access to safe, sufficient, and affordable water, sanitation and hygiene facilities has a devastating effect on the health, dignity, and prosperity of billions of people, and has significant consequences for the realization of other human rights. In its twenty years of existence, the Rotary Club of Patong Beach realized more than 20 Water Sanitation & Purification projects. With PP Brad Kenny † our Rotary club was in the superb position having a water expert among our members. Such projects are not completed in a few hours and need extensive engineering and time to accomplish. Together with Youthlink (an American registered non-profit organization dedicated to creating lifelong humanitarians by offering students and mentors quality, hands-on local and international service experiences), we got for several years the chance to conduct some projects. Smaller projects were conducted together with our Rotary Club members and their relatives.

BanYa Literacy and Learning Center

The original Bang Jo school was set up in 2010 by the Rghmonya Labour Union – Operation Learning Center Projects based in Ranong. Parents living in the construction worker camps in Bang Jo, Thalang area requested that a Burmese Learning Center be built so their children could receive equivalent education to that which they would receive in their home country. The children are taught English, Math, Social Studies, Dance, History, Science, and Burmese Reading and Writing. The school began with thirty students and two teachers. Our Rotary Club supported that project from the beginning. In 2016 the center moved to the village Ban Ya in a new dedicated facility expected to immediately accommodate 190 students. The funding for the school was via club funds, in cooperation with other organizations and the last project was a Rotary Global Grant of over 2 Million THB. The objective of this global Grant was: To structurally change the culture, management, and learning styles of the existing Learning Center into an expanded new long-term and sustainable literacy and learning center focussed on Thai, Burmese, and English language skills providing students with quality access to basic Thai and Myanmar primary and secondary education.

Patong Hospital

The Patong Hospital is a public governmental district hospital and therefore receives government funds following the registered population of that district. A district hospital (30–120 beds) covering a population of around 50 000. The Kathu District in Phuket consists of Kathu, Patong, and Kamala.

However, Patong and Kamala are famous holiday beach destinations and in high season Patong with about 1,800 hotels and over 85,000 hotel rooms, not including private villas and condominiums rental, the Patong hospital is catering to a much larger community than it gets funds for.

Since the Tsunami in 2004, the Rotary Club of Patong Beach is a realibale suporter of the Patong hopsital, realzing various projects.

Ambulance

Equipmen

Temperature Monitoring System

After the Tsunami, with the help of the Swiss doctors association of Zurich/Switzerland, and the Rotary Club of Uetliberg/Switzerland, we donated a fully equipped ambulance to the hospital. In 2015 we updated and re-placed the life-saving equipment. The ambulance was in service until 2020 and the recently donated equipment could be transferred to another ambulance.

Together with the assistance of RC Bargteheide/Germany, RC Shouson Hill/Hong Kong, and the Rotary International Fellowship of Scuba Divers, we donated various important equipment to the Patong Hospital. The project was conducted as a Global Grant.

After the corona pandemic broke out the Patong Hospital was in urgent need of a good, reliable temperature monitoring system as well as safety equipment for their staff to ensure they can proceed with urgent surgeries despite the corona infection present.

Currently, we are working on another Global Grant project with an Australian Rotary Club to procure new necessary equipment for the hospital.

In the last 20 years the total amount we helped the Patong Hospital is exceeding 10 Million Thai Baht or roughly 320,000 USD.

Tsunmai Projects

In the early morning of December 26^th, 2004, one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded struck off the coast of Indonesia, triggering a tsunami that swept away entire communities around the Indian Ocean. About 228,000 people were killed as a result of the giant waves that slammed into coastlines.

Phuket and its neighboring provinces was hit hard. The Rotary Club of Patong Beach has become a major partner to assist and help people and cooperate with other organizations.

It would take too much space to list all the various projects our Rotary Club conducted togehter with a lot of volunteers, friends, and overseas Rotary Clubs. Hence we selceted a few which we believe had a significant impact to the community.

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Pak Triam, a little village in the Phang Ngha province North of Phuket lost 23 of its 25 boats and many of their houses. The village itself had been built on a sandbar between the Indian Ocean and a small bay surrounded by mangrove forests. It is no longer a peninsula; the waves turned it into an island.

The new village is being built in an elevated clearing in the mangroves under the direction of a Bangkok planner and architect with skilled labor provided by our club. The villagers rebuilt their homes themselves and we provided the building material, procured the land and the water purification system. They are now self-sufficient again.

After Thai Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, visited the village the land title was upgraded to chanot and families got their Thai Nationality and now are holding the title deed to the land together by each one representative of 18 families. The Rotary Club of Patong Beach was awarded the “Prime minister’s Award” for that project.

Other projects we realized were help water sanitation proejcts for the Moken’s (Sea Gipsy as they are called) and lots of smaller, but not less important projects for the community in and around Phuket.

Please visit our designated legacy project website for the Water Safety Program and the Scholarship Program for more information.

We highly appreciate any donation for a certain project or donation in general for our projects.

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