PET-bottle Boat to Aid Orphans
Londoner Roxy Borocca, aged 26, paddled across Lake Biwa, Shiga Prefecture, on a boat made from PET bottles to raise funds for orphans of the earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku region.
“I want to give thanks to Japan and support the people of Tohoku”, Borocca is quoted as having said in a Mainichi Shimbun article on 9 July. Borocca is returning to the UK in August to marry.
At the end of March, Borroca and American Dusty Witman began studying how to row the boat, and collected 815 bottles that once held 500ml of liquid to build a 2.2m-long and 2.0m-wide vessel. This they rowed in the “Lake Biwa Bottle Boat Challenge” on 16 June.
The two assistant language teachers employed at Ishiyama High School, Shiga Prefecture, launched a related website that has helped raise more than ¥435,000 from around the world for the Tohoku Kid’s Project, a group helping local orphans.
