By: Dave Underhill, District Chair for Global Grants
Pop quiz: take a guess. What is the total number of draft + pending + active Rotary Foundation Global Grant Projects involving Rotary Clubs from Southern Maine and Seacoast New Hampshire?
A: Five
B: Twelve
C: Nineteen
D: Twenty-nine
E: Fifty-three
The answer to the quiz is (D): as of the date this article was written in mid-March, we had a total of twenty-nine global grants, of which ten were in draft or pending status, and nineteen underway with active-approved status. That’s a lot of international service!
Surprised? Our District Rotarians are hard at work around the globe on projects funded by you.
Your Rotary Foundation dollars are doing the work you choose. Our Foundation is supported by your Club and personal donations.
Those dollars are helping folks in Haiti, India, Zambia, Costa Rica and Bulgaria. We even have a Global Grant underway to serve indigenous communities along the Maine/Canada border. Some of our international projects started with an outreach team of local Rotary members travelling (pre-pandemic) to exchange knowledge and fellowship, trips funded in large part by Rotary Foundation money that came directly from you.
Our District Foundation Committee has a support team at its fingertips to help you navigate this process and get your application submitted and approved. The best time to call on us is when you are first creating a draft because we can save you a lot of steps along the way. Our team includes PDG Carolyn Johnson (Yarmouth), a member of the Rotary Foundation “cadre” with special experience in literacy grants in Guatemala and elsewhere. Carolyn will be our global grants coordinator beginning July 1.
TAKE the updated District/Global Grant training at this link: Grants Training 2021 Videos
You can always find our latest Global Grant report at this link: Global-Grants-Update.pdf
Let us help your Global Grant vision get funded: drop me a note or give me a call, and thanks for your Rotary passion.
Dave Underhill, RC/Portsmouth. Dave.underhill.nh@gmail.com. 603-706-3143