Below you will find two updates on our pending trip to Ukraine. Please read through to the end. There are two motions that will come to the club once the team has returned and assuming they are satisfied that the project should be undertaken. These motions have been bolded.
Update on the Rivne Blind Project (August 2017)
Everything is on track for the Alliston team to leave for Ukraine on Friday, September 29th and return on Thanksgiving Saturday, October 7th. All members, at their own expense, are spending two days in Warsaw on the way to Rivne.
Our team (Jack, David, Sue, Irene, Bill, and Roger) had a meeting to discuss some of the specific details of the trip. Since then we have learned that our government is offering Rotary clubs in certain countries (Ukraine is one that has been approved) additional grants. So if the team approves our project for the blind, we will be asking the club to consider the following motion: (note that the wording is slightly different than the one you saw at our initial presentation in July)
“That the Rotary Club of Alliston be the lead club in a proposed global grant, together with a Government of Canada grant totaling $65,000 USD, to improve the education and socialization of the blind and visually impaired children and adults of the Rivne province and use $5,000 USD of Alliston’s World Community Service funds designated from team donations”
The new funding for the grant is as follows:
Rotary Club of Alliston
Rotary Club of Richmond Hill
Rotary Toronto $ 3,000
District Designated Funds (DDF) $ 10,000
Government of Canada $ 20,000
World Fund of The Rotary Foundation (TRF) $ 35,000
NB. The $5,000 from Alliston does not come from the 2017-18 club charitable account for funds raised. The money comes from both team money left over from Tanzania 2014 and the Ukraine team 2017 money.
The team was not aware of the government grants but after a discussion we felt that we could not overlook this opportunity, since we will not have to use any more money than originally proposed for a total of $35,000. This will mean that we can do the entire project as outlined by the Rivne club originally.
If anyone has any questions about the project and missed the club presentation in July, please contact Roger for further information.
Update on the Rivne Project (September 2017)
We all leave this Friday night, September 29th, en route to Ukraine with a 2-day stop in Warsaw.
It looks as if we have the funding in place for the complete project provided the team feels comfortable with our on-site visit in Rivne. Assuming this is the case then to complete our funding we will partner with the Toronto club. To do this we will need to support one of their Foundation global grant projects (something we have done in the past). The following motion needs to come to the club:
“That the Rotary Club of Alliston support The Rotary Club of Toronto, providing $3,000 USD towards global grant #1529550 which is for building 30 blocks of toilets for girls in rural and slum schools in India”
This money will come from the Alliston World Community Service budget of $6,000 CDN.
The highlights of this Toronto project are as follows:
- This project is worth $35,000 USD with all of the appropriate Foundation matches;
- It is in the communities of Palghar, Jawhar, Dahanu and Vidarbha with a total population of 500,000;
- It is part of a long-term project which the Indian Rotarians will be undertaking in similar geographic areas within the next 2 to 5 years;
- Training for the use of the toilets will be provided; and
- The total number of toilets to be built is 120 which means the cost per toilet is $291.
Pictures of similar toilets are shown below.
This similar problem we saw in Tanzania but these Indian schools do have access to running water.
More details can be provided since we have a copy of the proposal as approved by the Foundation in our files. Bill, David, and I have looked over the details and are pleased to recommend the project, especially with the support of The Rotary Foundation which will multiply our money to $10,500 USD.
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