The Ballarat Soup Bus, a project of the Ontrack Foundation Inc., continues to be a beacon of compassion in the community, delivering after-dark meal services to the city’s homeless and vulnerable. Operated by an experienced, locally-based not-for-profit charitable foundation, the Soup Bus has long been supported by the generosity and cooperation of the Ballarat community.
Now, in an exciting development, the Ontrack Foundation is nearing completion of a second Soup Bus, designed to extend support to the under-served communities in the southern parts of Ballarat. This new initiative involves co-funding the installation of a commercial kitchen in the second vehicle, further enhancing the organisation’s capacity to provide practical, on-the-ground help where it’s needed most.
Jan Pryor, PP Northlakes Toukley Rotary extends sincere gratitude to the Balwyn Centenary Grants Program for our support, which has funded critical upgrades to the maternity ward and operating theatre at Sunkoshi Community Hospital in remote Khurkot, Nepal.
The grant also enabled a two-day emergency obstetrics training program, enhancing local healthcare providers’ skills and improving maternal and newborn health outcomes.
Currently, 2.5 billion people globally don’t have access to improved sanitation facilities – meaning more people have access to mobile phones than to toilets. Along with health issues presented by lack of proper toilet facilities, many girls don’t attend school due to their periods if there is no toilet. The goal of this toilet project was to ensure that each one of the schools that we support has adequate toilets to ensure that everyone can go to school and stay healthy along the way. Lack of access to sanitation creates a host of health problems, making it easier for diseases to spread, infecting drinking water and contributing to undernourishment and poverty. A child dies every 20 seconds because of poor sanitation, according to the U.N. It can also impact future economic opportunities because lack of sanitation can negatively affect school attendance, especially for girls. In 2013, 1,000 children died every day due to diarrheal disease because of poor sanitation
