Half a world away money raised by the Maple Valley Rotary club has been helping provide education and health care for families in Cameroon.

The project began, Brody Kunz explained at a recent meeting, in 1996. The club donated $100 for elementary school tuition sponsorships.

Since then the work in Cameroon has grown exponentially.

It started with an invitation for Dr. George Brannen, who has called Woodinville home for the better part of the past two decades with the exception of a three year stay in Cameroon in the early 1990s, to speak to the Maple Valley Rotary.

He was working for MultiCare after he and his family returned from Cameroon in 1994.

“One of my colleagues there was a member of Maple Valley Rotary and invited me to speak,” Brannen said. “The strength of the Maple Valley Rotary was so impressive, even with the distance from my residence… the club is special to us and supports the projects, so we stay with them.”

Brannen, who went to Dartmouth College, attended Northwestern University Medical School and the University of London, trained in general surgery at Duke Hospital then went to Johns Hopkins Hospital to further specialize in urology.

The Chicago native is no stranger to travel, having gone all over the country during his educational journey, and after establishing himself as a urologist, Brannen said his family “wanted to do something more impactive than practice medicine here.”

“I had accomplished everything I wanted to in this country,” he said. “Our decision as a family was to engage in a place that would really maximize our impact.”

He and his wife, Carolyn, researched for a little more than two years a location, preferably in Africa. After some work, some rejection and some time, the Brannnen family landed in Cameroon.

That connection to the country was something that has been critical for the Maple Valley Rotary because it has allowed its members to go in and make a difference while having guidance from someone familiar with the culture and its customs.

“From that experience (with Rotary), I’ve developed the term ‘relationship projects,’” Brannen said. “Our initial project was primary school support. What does that mean? We’re educating the population.”

During a presentation at Friday’s Rotary meeting, Brannen explained that every three years of primary school doubles a child’s chance of surviving to age 5. The average woman in Cameroon, he said, has 5.9 children.

“Maple Valley Rotary has saved several hundred lives based on that statistic alone,” Brannen said.

Beyond that Rotary has supported a microcredit education for professional health care workers program, known as MEPH, in Cameroon.

“Our purpose is to educate the impoverished gifted student to become a health care worker in Cameroon,” Brannen said. “They then become a health care worker in Cameroon therefore increasing the level of health care. We know that if a person is educated, he or she will educate their own six children and an additional four biologic children.”

In addition, Rotary has supported a laundry room project, which was funded by a matching grant, Brannen said.

“We were able to build a laundry room, equip it, and that laundry room is now sustaining and providing service for a much larger institution,” he said.

Rotary also raised money to buy seven microscopes for a laboratory school.

Brannen pointed to a health care center in the village of Kitiwum that Maple Valley Rotary contributed to and it took three months to build it.

“They’ve immunized over a thousand children, delivered several hundred babies,” Brannen said. “It’s a full scale facility. Once that institution was established, designated and it was clear that it was quite competent… the village was able to build a high school (through a government program).”

And due to the profits that were generated from patient services revenue, villagers in Kitiwum were also able to build a maternity center.

“This is a great example of a project that is impactive, sustainable and self-perpetuating,” Brannen said. “I’m convinced that several years from now that these projects… will have even further impact than we could imagine.”

Bill Woodcock, Kunz and Jeff Snelling, all members of the Maple Valley chapter, traveled to Cameroon in 2007 to see firsthand what the club had been supporting for more than a decade.

“Within Rotary, it’s fairly unique to have such a long term relationship with a project,” Kunz said. “This has been a really evolving relationship. Most of the time in Rotary you do a project then you’re done.”

Kunz was president at the time when the Rotary was working on the health care center in Kitiwum. He wrote the grant for the funds that supported it.

“When we built the building, it instantaneously brought health care to the community,” Kunz said. “All of those people that are employed there raise kids, support extended family through education. We’ve really not only brought health care to the area, but an economic engine that helps the area prosper. It was a fantastic project.”

Woodcock described the trip to Cameroon as “eye opening for me.”

“I’d never experienced anything like that,” Woodcock said. “Just getting to Shisong and Kitiwum was amazing. The biggest memory for me was the houses that we toured. We would tour these houses where they had many, many people living in a room the size of my son’s bedroom. We’d come with our soccer balls and lollipops and maybe brighten their day up for a little while.”

Woodcock said the trip had a significant impact on his life and his family.

It was also enlightening for Snelling.

“This was an amazing experience for me in terms of how much pride we have,” Snelling said. “What we’ve done down there is amazing. The people are just so grateful for what we’ve done for them.”

Snelling noted that the people he met in Cameroon were incredibly welcoming.

“We met a lot of lifelong friends there,” he said. “It’s not something that you go and meet some people and leave. They think of you as family. It was a great experience for me. I loved every minute. I’d like to go back.”

Branned said while there are no concrete plans to go back or current projects Rotary is raising money for, the work he’s done in partnership with the club will continue.

“It’s certainly a lifelong project for our family,” he said. “To be able to radiate that to the membership of this club is very gratifying.”