In January 2020, our club collaborated with the Rotary Club of Nuku'alofa in the Polynesian Kingdom of Tonga, to provide an urgently needed water storage tank for a school in the Village Houma. This project came about at the request of Lonita Benson, a 2014 graduate of Webster Groves High School, who was teaching for the Peace Corps in Houma, which is located on the Tonga island of 'Eua.
Although the Houma primary school compound had two water tanks, only one of them was suitable for storing drinking water. As a result, the fifty students were routinely sent home after lunch, after all the potable water had been consumed. Our club contributed $2,600 to purchase a 12,000-liter water tank (about 3,200 gallons), which collects rain water for the school children.
(This story was updated on March 4, 2021, to include details about two more tanks that were funded in December 2020. More photos of this project are available in the slide show link "Tonga Water Project" in the lower left column of this website.)
