October is ECONOMIC & DEVELOPMENT month in the Rotary world, and Rotary takes a focus on supporting sustainable projects that can help improve the basic necessities of life.  Did you know that:

 

• 795 million people — or 1 in 9 people in the world — do not have enough to eat
• 60% of the world’s hungry people are women and girls
• 70% of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas and depend on agriculture and related activities for their livelihood
• $9.2 million The amount The Rotary Foundation has spent to grow local economies and reduce poverty last year

Some examples of how Rotary supports economic development of communities in need:
 

1. Adopt A Village: members use a multifaceted and coordinated strategy to break the cycle of poverty in extremely impoverished communities, Rotary members train people to become resources for their community, offering networking activities, advice on new business development, and mathematics and financial management training.
 

         Example in District 5040: Adopt A Village in Laos
 Founded by Steve Rutledge, a Rotarian in Ontario, Adopt A Village in Laos started as project to increase education of children in remote villages of an impoverished country still suffering from the devastation of the Vietnam War. Members of the Rotary Club of Ladner have become involved in this project and travel early each year to these remote villages. The project has built schools and delivered education and sports equipment and supplies to the villages. A barrier to education proved to be poor quality of water and frequent illness which kept students at home. Now the project also delivers a water filter tank to each household. Ladner Rotary is also working on a project with other clubs in our District and with the support of a District grant to develop a small dam and water delivery system over 6.5 km to the northern village of Ban Xiengda, avoiding the demand on women and children who have to spend the time they could spend on education and other activities and as the village grows at a rapid rate.

 

2. Microloans: entrepreneurs use microloans to become street vendors, rickshaw drivers, weavers, and tailors. Microloans help break the cycle of poverty for women. For instance, most of the women living in rural Guatemala do not have the collateral to get loans from regulated financial institutions. The Rotary Club of Guatemala de la Ermita helped 400 local women complete financial literacy courses so they could pool their money and fund their own microlending program. In Esmeraldas, Ecuador, Rotary members helped grant more than 250 microloans and train more than 270 community members in sewing, baking, plumbing, microcredit, business management, and leadership.

 

3. Agricultural Opportunities: entrepreneurs in rural communities can borrow money to buy livestock or plant crops, or get training in sustainable farming. In west Cameroon, soil erosion and loss of soil fertility have significantly reduced farmers’ harvests. Rotary members gave farmers the skills they needed to improve soil fertility, control soil erosion, and market their produce. The results: increased crop yields and profits.
 

         Example in District 5040: Uganda Agricultural Community Project

The Rotary Club of Whistler has partnered with the Rotary Club of Muyenga in Kampala Uganda, and 10 other clubs, all in three Rotary districts, over the past eight years to plant trees, cash crops, wells in a small agricultural village in southern Uganda, near the Rwanda/Tanzania border. With four global grants from The Rotary Foundation over that period Rotary has sponsored local farmers through tree planting, chickens & eggs, sanitation demonstration projects, support for two schools, cash crops of pineapple, tomato and passion fruit, bee hives and honey, girls’ education with sanitary napkins, water wells and ponds. It has been identified as a model project for other aid agencies to follow.

 

 

As we end September we have now completed our out of Vancouver area travel and have completed our visits with 20 clubs and we are completely blown away with the welcomes we receive and the fine work our clubs do in their communities. But no stopping here, we still have 29 clubs to visit and that will continue through October and November as we visit the many clubs in the Metro Vancouver area and Squamish. Our visit schedule is posted on the District Calendar, and we continue to add stories and photos to our blog - Don's Diary - we hope you will all visit this page often and see for yourselves the tremendous work our Rotarians do. You may even get some great new ideas for your own clubs!

 

We are now looking beyond the official DG visit phase and asking clubs to let us know of special events and things like that as our intent is to continue visits to clubs throughout 5040 right through the Rotary year.

 

 

We are very gratified to see the support of many of our Rotarians and Rotary clubs in District 5040 (and beyond) to the Rotary BC Wildfire Recovery Fund. The fund will remain open for donations until the end of October so you still have time to contribute - and donations received charitable receipts where needed.

 

Deb and I did our Cariboo club visits in September, and the more you visit the area the more you begin to understand that the impact of the fires is far beyond just the scarring of the land and the loss of structures. Employees left in evacuation and have never returned, students lost their summer earnings and cannot return to their studies for lack of funds, businesses have had to close for loss of business, farms have lost an entire season of crops - the impacts go on and on.

 

We have now asked our four Rotary clubs in the directly affected area to think about the projects that they would like to take on with the funds they receive from our Wildfire Recovery Fund - so they can Make a Difference in their communities with projects that will help with sustainable recovery and future fire prevention.

 

 

We all know that it is good for all of us to do business with each other - certainly any time I am faced with a need for a service or purchase, I look first for a Rotarian business to deal with. Rotarians share a common set of business ethics and, also support our communities.

 

Business Networking was the very basis on which Rotary was first founded, and our goal is to strengthen that throughout District 5040. So, it is with great excitement that we announce the launch very soon of the new Rotary 5040 Business website. All Rotarians will be able to subscribe and list their businesses on a District wide searchable data base that is designed to make it easy to find Rotarian businesses in our local areas and around the Province. This will be linked with both the District and club websites. Watch for an official announcement soon!

 

 

Rotary Clubs throughout District 5040 are doing great things all the time, and we know it is impossible to highlight all in this newsletter - you can, of course, find all the club websites at rotary5040.org / club list. But here are just a few that we either joined in or are aware of....... The Rotary Clubs of (Burnaby, Burnaby Metrotown and Burnaby Deer Lake) opened their great new Outdoor Fitness Circuit at Burnaby Foreshore Park on September 15, the culmination of a three year project that recognizes both Canada's 150th birthday as well as the City of Burnaby 125th birthday. Mayor Derek Corrigan of Burnaby and DG Don Evans cut the ribbon at the opening ceremonies......The Rotary Club of Ladner turned sod with the Corporation of Delta on the new Ladner Rotary Splash Park project on September 21, and then held their 60th Anniversary celebration dinner on September 23 - Congratulations!........the Royal City (New Westminster) Rotary Club held their 22nd annual Pot of Gold Charity Golf tournament and raised $32,000 for their projects. Over the 22 years that the tournament has run more than $500,000 has been raised......The Rotary Club of Pender Harbour made two significant contributions in September - $10,000 to the PODS project and $5,000 to the RCM - SAR (Search and Rescue) towards their project to acquire a new vessel by 2020....the Rotary Club of Vancouver supported literacy with a donation to Dacoda Literacy Solutions presented at Vancouver City Hall in September