What projects do we help?
The Club will consider funding requests relative to its Community Service mandate (support for projects and activities that would improve life in the community) and its International Service mandate (expanding Rotary's humanitarian reach around the globe and promoting world understanding and peace).
In all cases, the funding goal, from the Club’s perspective, would be is to facilitate a better life for individuals or their community by initiating (planting the seeds) for desired outcomes and/or nurturing established projects or initiatives (fertilizing the seeds) towards desired outcomes.
Scroll to the end of the page for details on how to submit a project request!
Community Projects
The Avenue of Community Service covers projects and activities our club undertakes to improve life in our community.
We will ensure that our activities meet the Rotary 4 Way Test... and we promise to represent the Urban Spirits proudly and professionally in all activities we undertake in this mission.
Zebra Child Protection Centre Society 
The Zebra Child Protection Centre Society is a multi-agency facility devoted to operating a child-centered model of service delivery allowing for maximum gathering of investigative integrity while minimizing further trauma to victims and their families. Works in partnership with established agencies that deal with child protection matters.
Zebra Child Protection Centre Society provides information and public education on child abuse and child abuse prevention. Trained Child Advocacy Volunteers provide assistance to children and their families who have been affected by child abuse.
Zebra Child Protection Centre Society provides information and public education on child abuse and child abuse prevention. Trained Child Advocacy Volunteers provide assistance to children and their families who have been affected by child abuse.
As a celebration of our 10th anniversary (in 2013), we worked with the Zebra Protection Centre to purchase two service dogs for $50,000 to serve as comfort animals for abused children. The canines help abused and often scared children provide valuable testimony and have been used in Edmonton courtrooms – both were a first in Canada back then.
Prince Charles School Spaghetti Dinner 
Prince Charles provides an alternative program designed to provide the educational needs for urban First Nations, Metis and Inuit students. Approximately 93% of the students attending are of Aboriginal ancestry.
Twice a year, for parents-teachers night, our club organize a "Spaghetti Dinner". This helped more than double attendance and offers a warm meal for the kids, their families, and Prince Charles staff. Any leftover is packaged and given out to the families - but we usually don't have much!
In 2020, because of the pandemic, we weren't able to hold our usual "Spaghetti Dinner" nights. Instead, we provided markers and face masks for the students, and are working to sign up some of the kids to Dolly Parton's Imaginary Library, where each participating student would receive a book monthly until the start of the next school year.
Centre High Scholarship
Our club has a permanent endowment fund to support one scholarship for a student at Centre High each year attending post-secondary education.
Located in downtown Edmonton, Centre High Campus is a dynamic high school for fourth and fifth year students wanting to upgrade and explore post-secondary and career pathways. Providing programming for students to complete or upgrade their high school diploma requirements, but more importantly, allows any student a 'gap year' to explore and experience opportunities that help to inform their future choices, and help them to build self-awareness, and develop key community, collaboration and leadership skills. Each year we award one student a scholarship to celebrate their achievements and future goals.
Free Play for Kids (prev. Free Footie) 
Free Play for Kids' mission is to provide vulnerable kids with the opportunity to play in a safe, accessible, and inclusive environment at no cost to them or their families—because when kids are empowered through play, their families, their schools, and their communities are empowered as well.
Free Play for Kids is a totally free after school club for 4,000 kids in need. We partner with highly social vulnerable schools in the city. Most of our kids are refugees, newcomers, or Indigenous youth who cannot afford the “pay to play” model of recreation.
In previous years, an end-of-season tournament would be organized, gathering all the kids benefitting from this program, along with their families. Our club took on the responsibility to feed all these people and set up a big BBQ.
International Projects
Service to International programs offers a broad range of humanitarian, intercultural, and educational programs and opportunities designed to improve the human condition and advance Rotary's ultimate goal of world understanding and peace. Structured Rotary International programs and service opportunities help clubs achieve their service goals in their own communities and in communities abroad, fostering fellowship and goodwill in the process.
We will ensure that our activities meet the Rotary 4 Way Test... and we promise to represent the Urban Spirits proudly and professionally in all activities we undertake in this mission.
Amarok Society
(in partnership with fellow Rotary Clubs of District 5370)
They provide education for approximately 125 youth while teaching their mothers to be teachers for about $10,000.00 a year. Less than $100.00 per student per year. The home based schools are located in the poorest slum in Dhaka Bangladesh, where Islamist extremists prey on the vulnerable and uneducated.
Amarok Society operates 22 schools, primarily in Bangladesh. It is led by Gem and Tanyss Munro.
Amarok Society operates 22 schools, primarily in Bangladesh. It is led by Gem and Tanyss Munro.
Here is a message we received from the Amarok Society in October 2020:
"In the past year, the Combined Women’s School has certainly become an even brighter light within its community than it was already. The women who study there have gone throughout their community educating all its inhabitants as to safe practices to avoid Covid-19. As a result, in that community and neighbouring ones where there is an Amarok School, there have been no deaths from Covid and this is widely attributed to the work of these women. There are wonderful stories of survival made sweeter because the women combined their resources, their skills, and enterprise to ensure that they all were looked after. This alone is confirmation of the great benefit of even small amounts of quality education."
CAMTA (Canada Association of Medical Teams Abroad)
CAMTA sends a group of non-medical and medical volunteers to Ecuador each year to perform orthopedic surgeries on adult and pediatric patients. The medical volunteers also provide continuing education and share ideas of treatment practices with medical counterparts in Ecuador. For mission 2018 they performed 42 surgeries on adult patients and 34 on pediatric patients.
Firefighter Aide Ukraine
Amigo Relief Mission (in collaboration with the Rotary Club of Spruce Grove)
The mission of the Firefighter Aid for Ukraine (FAU) is to collect unneeded/unwanted firefighter bunker/turnout gear, personal protective equipment (PPE), life rescue equipment, and medical supplies from fire departments and vendors in Canada. FAU also aims to raise the necessary funds to send these goods to first responders in various locations of Ukraine who are in desperate need of equipment and supplies required to fulfill their duties to serve and protect citizens, while ensuring one's own safety.
Background
As a team member of the 2012 Rotary Club Group Study Exchange focusing on emergency services, FAU organizer Kevin Royle visited several cities and rural areas in Western Ukraine. While there, the team visited several fire stations, hospitals, clinics, training facilities, ambulance dispatch centers, and other medical facilities. In each visit, the recurring observations were:
- underfunded emergency medical responders attempting to fulfill their duties with worn out tools and equipment
- missing or inadequate PPE
- broken down, archaic apparatus and vehicles
-
working out of dilapidated and crumbling facilities.
The deficiencies are the result of under funding due to a magnitude of reasons. As the conflict in Ukraine continues, the situation for front line first responders and medical workers worsens, placing both first responders and citizens in jeopardy.
KIVA (Microlending)
More than 1.7 billion people around the world are unbanked and can’t access the financial services they need. Kiva is an international nonprofit, founded in 2005 in San Francisco, with a mission to expand financial access to help underserved communities thrive.
Kiva does this by crowdfunding loans and unlocking capital for the underserved, improving the quality and cost of financial services, and addressing the underlying barriers to financial access around the world. Through Kiva's work, students can pay for tuition, women can start businesses, farmers are able to invest in equipment and families can afford needed emergency care.
Our Rotary contribution has amounted to a total of $1,225 distributed to (and repaid by) 27 lenders.
Example of one of our loans – BI NYOMO 3
The group Bi Nyomo 3 is located in Teshie, Accra, Ghana, and is a group of three very active women who, above all, want to better their quality of life. They are selling fish, tuna, and scarves.
Rhoda, part of the Bi Nyomo 3 group is very excited to begin her 11th loan cycle with ID-Ghana, Teshie branch. Rhoda sells fish. Her business income is able only to pay for the costs of maintaining her home and supporting her husband for the payment of school fees. She is requesting a new loan in order to buy more fish to cover all of her customers' demands because without more investment capital, she feels that her own income is not sufficient.
Besides the loans, Rhoda and the other members of Bi Nyomo 3 also benefit from a combination of loans and education (training). The loan officer and the training officer share timely and useful information with the members on a variety of subjects like health, hygiene and nutrition, as well as self-esteem and violence against women. The members learn about effective business management practices and customer service, as well as gain essential knowledge about business planning, customer service, marketing and pricing. All of these subjects help them better their lives both economically and developmentally.
And this is only part of what we do!
Reach out to us at urbanspirits.rotary@gmail.com or connect directly with our members for more information.
Project Selection Criteria:
Assessment of funding requests will be based on the following four priorities:
- Youth at risk
- Beneficial to children
- Beneficial to the Community
- Projects or activities that are supported by and have special meaning for one or more individual club members.
Funding requests for any of the four priority areas will be considered only if such funding, if approved, would be used to:
- initiate grass-roots activities that would benefit a community or children or youth in the community OR,
- address gaps in community services or supports or gaps in meeting the needs of specific members of the community, AND
- measurable outcomes can be determined from the allocation of approved funding
Funding requests for any of the four priority areas will NOT be considered if:
- measurable outcomes cannot be determined from the allocation of approved funding, OR
- if the funding would be PURELY used for OPERATIONAL administration of an organization.
In assessing funding requests, the Club will consider if allocation of such funding would result in at least one of the following outcomes:
- Improve a child’s life
- Support the growth & development of children
- Have a positive impact on an individual’s life
- Have a positive impact on the community
.png)
