This past Tuesday, Wayne McCutcheon, the district chairperson for the Rotary Global Grants program, gave us a short introduction into the Rotary Foundation, what they do and why they do it. He started by describing a project that our district was involved in about ten years ago, where we provided the seed money to bring clean water to a village in Ecuador. The children in this village were always getting sick. The problem was eventually traced to their water supply, which came from a surface water ditch. Three hundred families participated in this project by digging the trenches for a new water supply system that included a storage tank, purifying system and piping to each home and the local school, as well as new latrines for the community. Each family now pays about five dollars a month for the upkeep of this system and they have not had any incidents of sick children due to water since it was installed. This has improved their quality of life immensely as the children in the village can now attend school more regularly and are able to play and have a more normal life. In all this project cost seventy-two thousand dollars.
Rotary has the vision to see a world where people can unite, take action and create lasting change. This also aligns with our fourth object, which is to create understanding, good will and peace. The Rotary Foundation is committed to funding humanitarian projects both locally and internationally. It does this through providing District Grants, Global Grants, Vocational Training Teams and various types of Scholarships through matching programs that help to greatly increase the original contribution. The projects they fund are thoroughly vetted and must meet a strict set of guidelines.
Locally, our district is currently overseeing fourteen global grants, with a contribution amount of just over one point five million dollars over the past four years. This past year our club alone raised over thirty thousand dollars for the New Hope School in South Africa, by contributing just over nine thousand dollars of our own funds and then applying for and receiving matching grants to make up the difference.
Currently the members of our district pledge two hundred seventy-seven thousand dollars a year to the Foundation, and only one in two members take part. Imagine what we could do if everyone took part? The vision of the Rotary Foundation and the fact that it can make such a big difference in helping Rotarian’s chosen projects come true, should make it our charity of choice. We can be a part of a wide variety of different projects both at home and around the world simply by making a contribution to this one foundation.
