Fundraiser to feature 13.25 mile canoe/kayak trip

By Conley Publishing Group

FREDONIA — Mel’s Charities, already widely known for its successful Mel’s Pig Roast, BC’s 8-Pin Tap, Lollapalooza, Pig Scramble Golf Outing and more, is adding another event to its fundraising family.

Mel’s River Run will be held May 28 and is a family friendly trip down the Milwaukee River via canoe or kayak. The approximately 13.25-mile trip starts at Waubedonia Park in Fredonia and ends at Veterans Park in Grafton. Registration and loading starts at 7:30 a.m., with paddles in the water at 9 a.m.

Participants must bring their own canoe or kayak.

The run can take three to four hours to complete and participants are advised to bring plenty of water. This is not a race, but an opportunity to take a scenic trip for a good cause.

Since 1999, Mel’s Charities has awarded more than $1.6 million to dozens of charities, with a strong emphasis on human services, special needs and memorial scholarships.

The cost of the River Run is $20 in advance and $40 the day of the event.

Since the event will take place on Memorial Day weekend, Mel’s is hosting two patriotic contests: bestdressed individual and bestdressed canoe/kayak.

To register, see the River Run route or for more information, go to https://givebutter. com/2022MelsRiverRun.

This is an UNTIMED, family-friendly river run. Bring your own canoe or kayak. This is not a race, we just want everyone to enjoy their time on the Milwaukee River. When you reach Veteran’s park in Grafton, Mel’s will be waiting for you with beverages, and food to enjoy!

By Helene Dudley, past president of the Rotary Club of Coconut Grove, Florida, USA

My eyes filled with tears as I attended  a Zoom meeting of the Yumbe, Uganda provisional Rotary Club discussing a service project they were planning to help a nearby village. I reached out in chat to another participant of the meeting who admitted she too was tearing up. The club is not yet officially recognized by Rotary International and the women are well below the poverty line but they are already doing service projects.

The 22 members of the Yumbe provisional Rotary Club are all leaders of Women’s Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) groups receiving funds from TCP Global to increase their loan pools. With regular loans to improve their businesses, their incomes increased so they can keep their kids in school and provide three meals a day.

Feeling they are already blessed by their regular access to loans (averaging $150), they decided their first service project should help a less fortunate community. After soliciting proposals from nearby villages, they opted to build latrines for a community that lacks sanitation.

I am continually surprised and sometimes shamed on my Zoom calls with Africa. I underestimate. I never stopped to question my initial assumption that VSLAs, made up of market vendors and subsistence farmers, lacked capacity for or interest in community projects.

A surgeon in Spain finds a way to treat patients in Nigeria

by Steve Almond

Even as a child growing up in Owerri, Nigeria, Dr. Nnamdi Elenwoke had a penchant for surgery. “I remember my mom would buy a chicken for us to eat, and she would ask me to prepare it for cooking,” he says. “I would cut into the bird very carefully, trying to understand its insides. My mom got mad at me for wasting time, but gradually she realized that I was doing this for a reason.” As a teenager, Elenwoke was taken to a nearby hospital to visit a family friend. He promptly wandered away from his mother to see patients on a nearby ward, feeling an instinctual desire to heal them.

With his family’s support, Elenwoke, 39, attended medical school and now works as a neurosurgeon in Barcelona, Spain. He still goes back to Nigeria to perform surgeries when he can, but his desire to help patients and doctors in his homeland prompted Elenwoke in 2016 to help launch Docotal Health, which uses an international community of doctors to remotely help patients in underserved parts of the world.

Sometimes, this consists of Elenwoke dispensing medical advice directly to a patient via email or video chats. Just as often, Docotal offers support to health professionals on the ground. “Our community of doctors has different specialties,” he explains. “We have a cardiologist who can help if there is heart pain, a radiologist who can read X-rays and scans. Our core group consists of 11 doctors, but each of us has our own network we can reach out to.”

Elenwoke’s devotion to service dates back to his teenage years in Nigeria, where he joined Interact, following in the footsteps of his brother-in-law, a longtime Rotarian. Rotary and Docotal recently collaborated on a campaign to provide personal protective equipment for health workers in Nigeria, and future projects are in the works.

“To be successful,” Elenwoke says, “you have to surround yourself with a team that helps you succeed. You also need ‘a little bit of salt,’ which means a little bit of luck. For me, finding Rotary, having them as part of my team, has been that little bit of salt.”