If you are reading this article than you or your club are interested in international service. You know about Global Grants and are probably aware of what is taking place from Rotary International that will impact our ability to fund them. To recap, affective July 1 R.I. will no longer match cash funds and the match for DDF drops from 100% to 80%.
 
Dale Gray, our Global Grants chair, tracks all of our District Global Grants and works very hard to help clubs to obtain funds to complete these projects. Through him and efforts by our D.G. Elizabeth Mahoney working with our clubs many of these grants get funded. But in talking with a number of our clubs I am finding that there are a lot of small dollar international projects taking place, and the only time anyone learns about them is if they are written up and posted to our newsletter.
 
What I am proposing is that clubs contact me with a brief outline of their project, its cost and its impact and pictures if you have them. If funding is needed than perhaps we can connect a club or two in the process-but let’s limit these grants to an amount of $4500 or less-remember it’s supposed to be on the CHEAP!  
 
To kick start this process let’s take a look at a few at a few of these international projects, and their impact.
 

This project serves a village whose basic water supply requires a 4.7 mile round trip and it needs to be carried back. One hundred fifty families and 850 individuals live in the village and the cost of the well that will serve them is $2800. Labor for digging the basic well will be done by the villagers; this cost covers the hard goods used for construction materials and the hand pump. Overseeing this project will be done by Prince Mayson who is from the village, now lives in Arizona, and has been employed by Intel. He will be there during its construction and is working with a local Rotary Club
 
Mesa Rotary Club------School Repairs, Additional Build Out-------Hermosillo Mex. -----Cost $1500

The Mi Escuelita Triqui School was established some 5 years ago in some very poor existing outbuildings on the outskirts of Hermosillo, Mexico. This school was created to serve the children of the Triqui Tribe as their parents are not recognized by the Mexican government as citizens and they are denied schooling. They and their children speak a pre-Colombian dialect and this has relegated members of the tribe to the menial labor class within Mexico with no ability to succeed beyond that. The school has undergone changes with funding and support but the leadership of the Hermosillo Milenio club working with the members of the Triqui community is doing what they can do to keep the school operating. Construction labor will be supplied by the members of the community as they can and much of the needed repair and construction materials have been gathered. The last need was for the adobe bricks used in wall repair and construction and this $1500 covers that.
 
Student enrollment varies from 60-150 students, but with repairs and new construction it will be able to 200 students. Besides receiving an education all students receive a free lunch.
 
Mesa West Rotary Club-------Computer Tablets-----Puerto Penasco, Mex. ---------------Cost-$2000

Working with the Mexican non-profit, Steps of Love, Mesa West pursued a $2000 District Grant to purchase 20 computer tablets. These tablets will be used by teachers to enable elementary school students to watch classes that are pre-recorded and streamed on-line. They will use five tablets at each of their four remote homework site clubs where they rotate students through in groups of five each hour and each student will have use of a tablet for the entire hour.
The teachers will also use the tablets to assist students that have fallen behind. In addition these tablets will be used for special needs students in conjunction with the ASU Speech and Hearing Clinic. By working with a Mexican non-profit whose goal is to empower rather than to create dependency these efforts will be maintained to continue this program. This $2000 investment will support and educate hundreds of students with thousands of hours of classroom time.
 
Sun City Rotary Club-----Bela Pad –Health and Hygiene Education—Lake Chapala Mex---$4000

This project was created by Becca Pohl president of the Lake Chapala Sunrise club. There are about 800 female students in the Lake Chapala, Jalisco region who miss school for several days during their menstrual period. The project provides materials, sewing machines and employment for women to produce a kit of eight reusable pads that will last for several years. Distribution of this product has been widened to more villages because of this project as well as raising the economic level of the women who produce them. In addition the female students are given basic hygiene education and are no longer missing class. This project impacts 213 students and was funded, by the Rotary clubs of Sun City, Scottsdale Sunrise and Chapala Sunrise.
 
Each month I hope that we can produce more Rotary Club International Service project success stories—on the CHEAP-and I can be contacted at 602-622-7289 or abefeder1@gmail.com
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