Since 2010, about 800 schools have been equipped with more than 24,000 portable microscopes through the Microscopes in Schools project. The Rotary Club of Freshwater Bay started the project. But for many years it became the intense focus of Diane Collins, charter president, and her husband, Kenneth, a past Rotary International director and Foundation trustee who died in August.
Besides sacrificing garage space for storage and a distribution operation, the couple promoted the microscopes, enlisted Rotary club sponsors, kept records, and carried out the more mundane tasks. The project has multiplied in a big way. “It currently allows in excess of 280,000 students annually, in all states of Australia as well as many countries in Asia and the Pacific, to develop a love of science,” Collins notes.