CIRENCESTER Rotary Club has donated £1,600 to charity to help rebuild a preschool in Madina, a small town in Sierra Leone.

The donations have been used to buy essential materials and local labour, to help repair and rebuild.

Repairs to the toilets, roof, gates and their well, are some of the most essential labour the donations have helped facilitate.

This project is an offshoot from Help Madina and is fully funded by the rotary club via Help Madina, ensuring the funds are safely received.

The charity, run by local GP Dr Rohit Sethi and his wife Dr Veronica Sawicki, helps provide health care, feeding malnourished infants, improving sanitation with water wells and toilet provision, providing various community projects and caring for the elderly.

Lynn Adlington, chairman of the rotary club international committee said, “We are proud to raise a great deal of money for both local, national and international charities, we want to ensure that it benefits the greatest number of people possible.”

For Lynn, the cause is very close to her heart, having visited Madina two years ago and deciding to chose it as the club’s international project.

“I’m looking forward to going back next year to see for myself the difference we’ve made," she added.

The next project for the preschool is to buy equipment for the playground, which, the club will support by raising money at their annual quiz in November this year. The preschool has a rotary logo outside the gate to show their involvement, which has been hand-painted by a talented local boy which, has in turn provided him with some income.