Matching Grant for Piyali School

Matching Grant for uninterrupted power supply for Piyali School

Piyali Learning Centre presently caters to nearly 200 girl students, who are provided with education, clothes, toiletries, healthcare and two nutritious meals a day free of cost. Their mothers and other womenfolk of the village benefit from the adult literacy, vocational training and self-employment through micro-credit programmes run by the Rotary Club of Calcutta Metropolitan.

The school is presently functioning from rented facilities with limitation of expansion. Therefore, an ambitious task of constructing a new school building and canteen is already being implemented.  The construction of the first phase is likely to be complete by June, 2011 and will cater to 250 girls. The facilities would be gradually expanded to cater to 600 girls and free boarding facilities to girls from class five upwards by the end of 2012.

The power situation in Piyali is very erratic and alarming, due to which the village of Piyali and surrounding areas go without electricity at times for over 10 hours a day. To meet the urgent need to provide a diesel generator in the new premises for uninterrupted education of children, our club has entered into a strategic partnership with Rotary Club of Belur to take up a Matching Grant project of $ 14,559 jointly with Kensington/ Berlin Rotary club and R I Dist 7890 as international sponsors.

Rotarian Art Bautista of University Area Rotary Club, Dist 5890 played an important role in designing the project. He offered a significant amount of club contribution + DDF for this project, but his club is from a Pilot district and TRF policy restricts the use of DDF only from pilot district by way of gift. As such, his district 5890 has made an outright gift of $ 3,000 to be used for this project through D 7890. Matching this gift, D 7890 are putting up an aggregate DDF of $ 5850 (inclusive of gifted DDF).

The application was submitted on 30th March 2011, one day before the closing of deadline for current Rotary year’s Matching Grant cycle, and was acknowledged by TRF with a MG # 75134.

Project partner DG Prasad Menon of D 7890 of USA stated that “This was quite an accomplishment; I haven't seen a MG project put together between 3 Districts and 4 Rotary Clubs in such a short time. Kudos to you for spearheading.”

Primary Host Project Contact is none other than ARRFC PDG Ravi Sehgal, who remarked “Thanks Vishnuji, Its all your effort that we could see the project planning & preparation being completed in record time !!!”