International Projects

Award-winning Service and Project Ideas for Clubs
 
All of the following international projects won honors at the 2014 Rotary Dist. Conference. Please contact the club directly for details about how you can partner with them or replicate such projects elsewhere. 
  • Through a partnership with the Brooklyn Park and Minnetonka Rotary Clubs, the Crystal-New Hope-Robbinsdale Rotary Club received a $6,000 grant from District 5950 to ship a container of medical, school and construction supplies to Bolivia. The project supported the mission of Mano a Mano, which creates partnerships with communities in Bolivia. Donated items included wheelchairs, crutches, walkers, hospital beds, medical instruments, airplane parts, machine tools, and school and office supplies. The total value of items packed into the container was $500,000. These items are being distributed to clinics, schools, and infrastructure projects Mano a Mano operates throughout Bolivia.

  • Apple Valley Rotary funds the First Fruits project, which educates people in Haiti about agricultural methods to help them produce their own food, as well as foodstuffs for market.  So far, the project has trained 25 farmers, who have produced enough vegetables to pay three workers.
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  • The completion of the Livingstone School in Bangladesh was a major accomplishment for the Rotary Club of Brooklyn Park. Through contacts shared by a local church, the club established a relationship with the Livingstone Evergreen Advancement Foundation and a Rotary Club in Bangladesh. Their efforts helped many children in schools in northwestern Bangladesh have clean water, better sanitation and school supplies, including desks and chairs. Brooklyn Park also completed a smaller project to provide backpacks and school supplies to 15-hundred students who live in the slums of Dhaka.

  • 2013-2014 was an extraordinary year for Waconia West Carver Rotary, especially in the area of International Service. The club built on its successes of last year, when two Rotarians traveled to Chimbote, Peru, to explore a partnership with the Friends of Chimbote mission, Peruvian NGOs, and the Chimbote Rotary Club. This venture provided the foundation for a collaboration between the club, Friends of Chimbote, Waconia Public Schools and several other Rotary Clubs. This year, the club provided financial support to the Friends of Chimbote Container project in collaboration with Chanhassen, Excelsior and other Rotary Clubs.  They also facilitated a service learning project with the 8th grade class at Clearwater Middle School. All 8th graders spent a week collecting and donating school supplies for the Friends of Chimbote “School-in-a-Bag” initiative. A total of 39 backpacks were filled to capacity with essential school supplies for low-income families.

  • E-QUIP Africa is the Rotary Club of Willmar’s pet project. The founder and director began with a suitcase full of used pencils and tablets from Willmar school children that he took with him on a trip to Ghana, West Africa. To date, his organization has delivered six shipping containers of school and medical supplies to schools in the bush of West Africa. He has also initiated curriculum for teachers in Ghana. Willmar Rotary has assisted with matching grants for different phases of E-QUIP Africa.

  • Founded by Bloomington Noon Rotarian Abul Sharah in 1999, International Village Clinic is located in rural east India. With the help of club funds, the clinic has grown steadily over the years from one mobile clinic into a fully-equipped medical facility serving over 54,000 patients per year. The Bloomington Noon club has used matching grant dollars to help the clinic grow and thrive.

  • The Rotary Club of Buffalo supports the Wakami Project, a $90,000+ project designed to empower Guatemalan women to become entrepreneurs. These women are creating jewelry for international markets while learning business concepts to work more productively and profitably.

  • Buffalo Rotary also sent a shipping container to a hospital in Escuintla, Guatamala. During a previous trip, club members learned that the lack of hand-washing stations that made pneumonia one of the leading killers in the newborn ward. A shipping container of medical supplies has started to improve hospital conditions.

  • The Rotary Club of Minneapolis City of Lakes has created a partnership with a Rotary club in Brazil to support the Human Milk Bank of Marilia. The human milk bank opened in 1984 and has been model for the entire country, but lacked key equipment to help more children and moms. Improving milk storage capacity and quality has allowed the club to expand the number of newborns who benefit from the Milk Bank.

  • In November 2010, St. Cloud Rotary’s first water project in the Dominican Republic consisted of a new water system for the small village of Los Guineos. On a visit last spring, a team of St. Cloud Rotarians noticed that part of the original water system was not working due to the elevation in that part of town. The club committed $13,000 to design improvements to the water system with Peace Corp water engineers.