Our club belongs to District 7030. This district consists of the following countries: Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, French-Guyana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Martinique, St.Kitts, St.Lucia, St.Vincent & the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad & Tobago.

The total Caribbean region consists of clubs in Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Netherland Antilles, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands

DATE OF ADMISSION : 10TH AUG. 1957

MAJOR RECENT PROJECT: Disability awareness campaign

This has lead to national policy improvements and vocational assistance programs.

The Rotary clubs involved conducted a study to gauge the problem and discovered that 95 percent of all area disabled were unemployed. To address the problem, the Rotary clubs of Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and Coral Gables, Florida, USA, used a Health, Hunger and Humanities (3-H) Grant (US$268,800) from The Rotary Foundation to open a pioneering center for people with disabilities, providing both telemedicine and distance-learning services.

The goal is to assist persons with disabilities to achieve economic and social independence with "self-help" skills, to promote public awareness and training through advocacy, to create an on-line resource bank and a community-based consortium of groups working with the disabled, to implement a conference, to establish a resource and training center, and to provide vocational education to the disabled and training to rehabilitation professionals.

The joint project has revolutionized vocational and clinical rehabilitation and encouraged changes in government policy. The Minister of Works and Transportation set a new national policy requiring wheelchair-accessible curbs at all new public and private construction sites after Rotary members obtained a second Rotary Foundation grant of US$30,000 to create 400 sidewalk ramps in Trinidad and Tobago.

Subsequently, the country's Minister of Health created a task force, including members from both Rotary clubs, to create a national plan for medical and rehabilitation services. Long-held stereotypes about physical disability are beginning to disappear as a result of these new programs.

CHARITON ' 02 is currently focused on providing an Exclusive Bus Service for Wheelchair users in Port of Spain.