No lights
No gas
No phones
No computers
No digital clocks

That's what Maidenhead Rotaract went without for a whole 24 hour period...

We stopped using all mod-cons at 10am on Saturday 7th March; the fuse box, heating, and lighting were switched off, mobile phones and laptops locked away and the cooker made redundant.

Not to be sat around doing nothing the members quickly found other things to do including playing basketball, where the girls showed off their talents to thrash the boys in a very convincing win!  As the evening drew closer, candles were lit and they settled into a night of playing various board games by candle light!

Food became an interesting challenge too…how do you prepare dinner for 6 people when you don’t have access to a cooker?  The answer, use a charcoal BBQ!  They even managed to heat some water on the hot coals to make cups of tea!

Why? You may ask...
So what was the point of this 24 hour black-out?  Well, the group did it to not only raise awareness of our dependency on modern technology but to also raise valuable funds for the Rotary Polio Challenge, helping to eradicate this disease from our planet.

This sponsored event managed to raise over £670 which will directly support immunisation campaigns in developing countries, where polio continues to infect and paralyze children, robbing them of their futures and compounding the hardships faced by their families.

After 20 years of hard work, Rotary and its partners are on the brink of eradicating this tenacious disease, but a strong push is needed now to root it out once and for all. It is a window of opportunity of historic proportions.