International Programs- Rotary Foundation
The Hanover Rotary Club is part of Rotary International, a worldwide association of 32,000 clubs with 1.2 million members whose mission is to provide service to others, to promote high ethical standards, and to advance world understanding through its fellowship of business, professional and community leaders. Hanover Rotary Club supports a variety of overseas projects that it selects itself. It also participates through financial support from its Club Dues and from member donations to the Rotary Foundation to the major international philanthropic initiatives of Rotary International, the most important of which in the last decade has been the effort to eradicate polio, worldwide. Since beginning the project in 1985, Rotarians have contributed close to one billion dollars and hundreds of thousands of volunteer-hours, leading to the inoculation of more than two billion of the world's children. Now a partner in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) with WHOM, UNICEF, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Gates Foundation, Rotary International has been recognized by the United Nations as the key private partner in the eradication effort.
Club Selected Projects
The Hanover Rotary extends its support to good works overseas selected because of a relationship with the Upper Valley Community. It has adopted the practice of selecting a new project each year and supporting a selected activity for a three year period in hopes that the continuity of help will leave a more enduring legacy than otherwise might be the case. So the Club’s international philanthropic budget each year consists of three projects, one in the final year, one in mid-term, and one just beginning.
Funds for this international support activity are raised, in part, through a pancake breakfast offered to the Community each year on a late winter Sunday in the Hanover Fire Station. The breakfast is deliciously cooked by Rotary Club members displaying their Sunday breakfast skills and is served on paper place mats holding advertising paid by local businesses. The international projects are also supported from the general charitable budget accumulated each year from the Club’s various fund raising activities.
Beneficiaries Selected for Support in the Hanover Rotary International Program have included:
The Village of Tejutla, Guatemala
$8,000
Teachers in the secondary school in Tejutla, a village in Mayan highlands of Guatemala had taught themselves how to use computers but lacked hardware to open instruction to their students. Hanover Rotary Club collected used computers in good functioning condition and shipped them down so the school could open a computer lab. Over 5 years the Club sent additional support so they could purchase Spanish language software and link all the computers together to facilitate instruction and to purchase a satellite dish so they could hook up to the internet. The students were able to download information on simple solar hot water heating systems, basic household electrical wiring, and nutrition and were soon offering night classes to the adults in the village.
Grassroots Soccer
$11,700
Grassroots Soccer (GRS) is a non-profit organization founded in 2002 that uses the power of soccer to educate, inspire, and empower communities to stop the spread of HIV. . Founded by four professional soccer players, Grassroots Soccer is mobilizing the most vulnerable population of youth ages 12 – 19, to break the cycle of AIDS by engaging local coaches who equip young people with the knowledge, skills and support they need to avoid HIV. GRS has worked in 28 countries with flagship sites in South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Haiti Quilt Project – Hanover High School
$6,700
A group of Hanover High School teens, supported by their families and Hanover High Faculty, are assisting the women of a Haiti mountain village to learn how to sew quilts as a means of earning craft income. They make periodic weekly visits to the village that involve training and a wealth of opportunities for person to person contact including some elementary school teaching. Proceeds of the Pancake Breakfast in 2012 and 2013 and the breakfast to be staged this winter are used to provide necessary supplies and support to this locally based international outreach.
Hanover Rotary provides support to a variety of other international charitable and development efforts through direct grants and through its support of Rotary International which is engaged in larger scale efforts, in particular the one billion dollars it has provided over the years in support of the International Health Organization program to eradicate polio.
