Help Pilgrims Change Kids Lives
A dozen members from Silves Rotary Club with a combined age of over 850 years decided to walk the Camino Portugues from Valença to Santiago de Compostela. Starting on the 24 September 2022 the pilgrims will walk some 120 km over six days to provide children with learning difficulties a calm and ideal place to learn.
Each team member will be supported by a class of pupils at the Agrupamento Escolas De Silves Sul and carry a mascot presented by their class so that the pilgrims can share their experience daily with the school children. You could say there will be 24 pilgrims.
Looking at them, you would not bet on these pilgrims making it. A couple have recently had hip replacements, one a heart surgery, another an eighty year old dodgy knee – whilst others have suffered a sprinkling of other injuries that one picks up in your seventies – yes, the average age of the pilgrims will be over seventy. They are the walking wounded.
Why go through the challenge? You may well ask. The answer is to raise money for this fantastic cause and to inspire you to donate to us so that we can resource a much needed sensory room and garden in Agrupamento Escolas De Silves Sul.
The school needs a sensory room and garden, a calm, safe haven to enable them to benefit fully from their time in school. The dedicated teachers at the school work hard to provide the children with the necessary skills to live independently in the future.
Silves Rotary Club Pilgrims are asking your help to raise 20,000 Euros, 100% of your donations will go to turn that old classroom and scrubby garden into a harmonious learning space with all the necessary resources. Any contribution no matter how small is welcome.
We are inspired by John Bunyan’s famous hymn which goes
He who would valiant be
Against all disaster.
Let him in constancy
Follow the master.
There’s no discouragement,
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.
Be Inspired too. Please donate
More information in the next few weeks about the pilgrims:
You can donate now at GoFundMe.com via our page “Help Pilgrims Change Kids Lives”
Handover 2022/23
2021/22 has been a memorable year for Silves Rotary Club as for all Rotary clubs Covid has taken it’s toll. We worked hard under our President Alan Winn to help the community and to keep as many fundraising activities as possible. We had a great start to the year with Back to school, followed closely by the Christmas Shoe box appeal. We manage our first concert in two years and raised 4500€. We have been training for a sponsored walk along the Camino starting at the Portuguese border and finishing at Santiago to Compostela to provide a sensory room and garden for Autistic and Downs Syndrome pupils at Armacao de Pera school. Alan handed over to Isabel Flores for the year 2022/23. Isabel is shouldering the president’s job for the fifth time. Continuing our work in education is high on her agenda but she will add some touches of her own to support further members of the community.
Rotary Clube de Silves 