In 2013, the Foundation rolled out its simplified grant model with a focus on sustainability. Is it working?
Two years in, the answer is yes: Rotarians have been using global grants to improve maternal health in Timor-Leste, fund a microcredit program in Ecuador, and confront myths that threaten the safety of people with albinism in Tanzania, to name just a few of the projects. More than 90 percent of surveyed applicants have rated the grants as good or excellent, and the second year of the program has brought an 85 percent uptick in activity as more members use global grants. Here’s what we heard from the field.
CHALLENGING SUPERSTITION TO SAVE TANZANIA’S ALBINOS
AREAS OF FOCUS: Promoting peace, fighting disease
Superstition runs deep in many parts of the world. But in some African nations, it can prove deadly for people with albinism. In Tanzania, individuals with little or no pigment in their skin and hair are often marginalized. Worse, they are sometimes hunted for their body parts, which are believed to be talismans that can bring power and wealth. Fortune-tellers and witch doctors spread the myth. “There have been several incidents of young people with albinism being kidnapped and their arms and legs getting chopped off,” says John Philip, past governor of District 1040 (England) and chair of the International Fellowship of Rotarian Doctors. Over the last decade, more than 150 people with albinism have been murdered or mutilated in Tanzania alone.
“Not only are they living under threat, they have health issues because they have no pigment and live under the tropical sun,” adds Philip, a veteran of several medical projects in the region. “They are vulnerable to skin cancer, and they have severe eye problems.”
The $108,000 project funds training for optometrists and dermatologists in the country’s northern and lake zones, who may be unfamiliar with the medical challenges facing people with albinism. “But our primary objective is to build understanding between the albino community and the local community, to remove the myths that witch doctors have propagated over time,” says Faye Cran, a member of the Rotary Club of Moshi, Tanzania. To do this, local Rotarians work with partners to hold community meetings, during which they show an educational video and distribute leaflets. The materials stress that albinism is a genetic condition and that there is no medical risk to those who work with albinos, Philip says.
The grant also funds a microcredit program and community-wide training in vocations such as carpentry and motor mechanics to help albinos integrate into the workforce. For a new venture to be eligible for a microloan and vocational training, at least one participant must be albino. “The economic benefit is extended to all, and they work together for mutual understanding and tolerance,” Philip says.[shareprints gallery_id=”4303″ gallery_type=”filmstrip” gallery_position=”pos_center” gallery_width=”width_100″ image_size=”large” image_padding=”0″ theme=”dark” image_hover=”false” lightbox_type=”slide” titles=”true” captions=”true” descriptions=”true” comments=”true” sharing=”true”]
ROTARY’S NETWORK WARDS OFF EBOLA
AREAS OF FOCUS: Providing clean water, fighting disease
Days after returning from eastern Liberia, members of a California-based vocational training team learned that the Ebola virus had struck bordering Guinea, just a few miles from the villages they had visited. “I heard about it at 11 at night, watching CNN,” says team member David Pittman, of the Rotary Club of Oroville. “The Phebe Hospital, which we visited, lost seven nurses and two doctors.”
The team members were worried about the 20,000 residents of the 26 villages in Liberia’s Panta District, where they had been advising community members on how to fix wells and teaching sanitation practices. (The VTT was part of a $90,500 global grant project organized by the Rotary clubs of Gridley, Calif., and Sinkor, Liberia, to build 60 new wells and refurbish 22 others.) Yet, as of press time, those villages have not had a single case of Ebola – a success that, Pittman says, stems partly from the relationships formed on that trip. Within 90 days of the team’s return from Liberia, Rotarians, primarily across California, raised $14,000 and transferred it to a Sinkor organization for the purchase and distribution of protective equipment including rubber gloves, disposable gowns, shoes, buckets, and disinfectant.
Team leader Dan Boeger, of the Gridley club, lauded the quick action of Gus Flomo, a member of the Sinkor club, and his wife, Cecelia, who organized the distribution of the medical supplies and taught safety procedures to nurses, such as how to quarantine suspected cases.
“We knew that Gus and Cece would deliver the safety equipment to the villages,” Pittman adds. “What had a more indirect effect was the health and sanitation training,” he notes, recalling the VTT. “We would have a class in the morning on repairing wells, and in the afternoon team member Susan Johannsen, a health care worker and team member, taught the villagers about hand washing.”
The lessons on hygiene practices and disease transmission proved timely. “When we got the information that Ebola was killing people nearby, we encouraged our people to keep vigilant, to keep washing their hands,” Flomo says. “The training came just in time.”
SCHOLAR GIVES BACK
AREA OF FOCUS: Supporting education
At the Dominguez Hills campus of California State University, a young woman named Hillina Solomon Gebreyohannes seems to be everywhere. One of several students photographed for the university’s ad campaign, her image is on buses, posters, and brochures. “They make you famous,” she says, laughing. It’s a minor distraction for the 27-year-old, who earned a master’s degree in education this year, funded in part by a scholarship sponsored by the Rotary clubs of Concord, Calif., and Addis Ababa-West, Ethiopia.
Back home in Ethiopia, she is a model of a different sort for the young residents at Project Blue, a facility for orphaned and abused adolescent girls run by the Help a Life Foundation. The group home is both a safe harbor and tutoring center outside Debre Markos, a community about 180 miles northwest of Addis Ababa. Gebreyohannes is the home’s project coordinator, and she will take over management of Project Blue when she returns. The 60 girls living there are preparing for college in a country where women typically have little education.
“There is endemic abuse of women [in Ethiopia],” says Michael Barrington, a Concord Rotarian and Help a Life Foundation board member. “If you’re an orphan girl, it is absolutely awful.”
Gebreyohannes grew up in Addis Ababa and started volunteering at Project Blue in 2011. “The girls would ask things like, ‘What does it feel like to have an education? How do your dreams come true?’” she recalls. “They have been out there, alone, taking care of themselves. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.” She earned a bachelor’s degree that year and worked briefly for a medical equipment supplier, but her heart remained at Project Blue. With a master’s degree, she’ll bring a level of expertise to Ethiopia that few women have. She hopes to integrate technology into the students’ curriculum. “The girls dream that my achievement could be their achievement,” she says. “We call each other sisters.”
IN BUSINESS
AREA OF FOCUS: Growing local economies
Esmeraldas, Ecuador, is home to an oil refinery and burgeoning fish and cocoa businesses. But economic gains have largely bypassed the Afro-Ecuadorean community of Río Verde, said to be descended from slaves who escaped from a ship that foundered off the coast in the 1500s. Most residents live far below the poverty line.
Through a microcredit project involving contributions from 64 clubs, the Rotary Club of Quito Occidente is mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs, and a Quito-based cooperative, FUDECE, is overseeing the issue of small loans. The loans, averaging $400, are made to 320 borrowers in groups of about 30 people, who share responsibility for seeing that everyone succeeds. FUDECE also manages a vocational training center.
Holly and Keith Axtell, members of the Rotary Club of Marin Evening in San Rafael, Calif., one of 19 clubs in District 5150 (California) contributing to the project, are helping to provide banking services to the community. “We use Rotary contributions as loan capital,” says Keith. “Our payback rate has been 98 or 99 percent.” Once repaid, the money is loaned out again, resulting in a self-sustaining operation.
“There’s a fishery, a bookstore, a bakery,” says Gloria Landázuri Camacho, of the Quito Occidente club. “There are several shops that sell makeup, earrings. We train them to build a business plan.” But higher income isn’t the only dividend for enterprising villagers: “I see the development of people,” Landázuri Camacho says. “They are proud of themselves. Their self-esteem is higher. People grow with microcredit.”
GIVING LIFE
AREA OF FOCUS: Saving mothers and children
In 2009, Ian Knight learned that one in every 35 mothers in the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste died in childbirth. Appalled by that statistic, the past governor of District 9800 (Australia) decided to do something about it. In 2010, he formed a district committee to address the dearth of medical expertise in the nation. The multiyear, $114,000 effort started in 2011, with Timor-Leste clubs in District 9550 serving as hosts, as a part of the new grant model pilot. The project will conclude this year with its eighth global grant-funded VTT visit. Each one has included two-day workshops that have provided hands-on training for midwives and health workers, focusing on the primary causes of maternal death, such as hemorrhaging, infection, premature birth, and obstructed labor.
Knight estimates that most of the participating health workers had not received any new training in about seven years. Their workload is enormous, and they do not have the capacity to take time out for training, says team leader Jeremy Oats, of the Rotary Club of Melbourne, a leading obstetrician in Australia. “So far we’ve trained over 200 midwives and doctors,” Oats says. They, in turn, train other midwives and obstetricians.
NO BITE = NO MALARIA
AREA OF FOCUS: Fighting disease
A $10 bed net is often all it takes to ward off malaria. Steve Baker, of the Rotary Club of Key Biscayne, Fla., is becoming known as Venezuela’s source of mosquiteros, as the nets are called. He started “No Bite = No Malaria, the Mosquitero Project” in 2011. Today, the $77,500 global grant project aims to distribute 6,000 free nets to indigenous people, mostly in Sifontes, in Bolívar State. The nets are configured to accommodate hammocks and are treated with insecticide that lasts three to five years.
Educating families to use the nets consistently, and to do so properly, is a prime element of the project. “You tell people malaria is caused by mosquitoes,” Baker says. “Mosquitoes that land on the net die. When people see dead bugs on the ground, it’s powerful proof that the nets protect them.” Malaria infections in the area have shown a sustained 80 percent reduction since the project began.
Rotarians use GPS to keep track of the homes that have received nets, which are distributed by members of the project’s host club, the Rotary Club of Puerto Ordaz.[shareprints gallery_id=”4309″ gallery_type=”filmstrip” gallery_position=”pos_center” gallery_width=”width_100″ image_size=”large” image_padding=”0″ theme=”dark” image_hover=”false” lightbox_type=”slide” titles=”true” captions=”true” descriptions=”true” comments=”true” sharing=”true”]
HEALING THROUGH MUSIC
AREA OF FOCUS: Promoting peace
In the 1990s, ethnic conflict in the Balkans killed more than 100,000 people. That strife continues to reverberate in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s communities of Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs, and Catholic Croats.
Drawing on lessons learned in healing societal rifts after German reunification, members of the Rotary Club of Koblenz Deutsches Eck, Germany, worked with the Rotary Club of Sarajevo to bring people together through music in the former Yugoslavia.
German Rotarian Manfred Faig, an artistic director at a music school, helped form a cross-cultural youth choir in Visoko, just north of Sarajevo. There, about 40 singers of all faiths, ages 12 to 22, find common ground and participate in conflict-resolution workshops. Faig and Alma Aganspahić, a conductor in Sarajevo, shared the podium as the $40,500 project culminated in performances of Karl Jenkins’ “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace,” accompanied by professional orchestras.
“The kids are happy because it helps them forget the problems of the world and the problems in Bosnia,” says Tomislav Talić, a member of the Koblenz Deutsches Eck club who is originally from Croatia. The program is expected to continue with a grant from the European Union. — Brad Webber