As Rotarians worldwide focus on the Economic and Development area of focus during October, it is hard to comprehend that nearly 800 million people live on less than $1.90 a day. In 2015 alone an estimated 2.6 million children under the age of five died from malnutrition-related causes.

 

With support of The Rotary Foundation, Rotary members seeking sustainable solutions to poverty are providing training and access to well-paying jobs and financial management institutions to strengthen local entrepreneurs and community leaders, particularly women, in impoverished communities.

 

With that support from Rotarians, entrepreneurs use microloans to become street vendors, rickshaw drivers, weavers, and tailors. In rural communities they can borrow money to buy livestock or plant crops or get training in sustainable farming and learn how to extend their growing season so local residents eat healthier, local food.

 

Communities far removed from energy resources can access solar lights allowing people to cook, work and learn at night. One example of that is the tremendous effort of Terry Umbach, in my club of Sunshine Coast – Sechelt, to bring small lights, the size of hockey pucks, to remote villages in Kenya through clubs in Nairobi. Another is solar street lighting, along with educational facilities and supplies, and water filters and systems, brought to remote villages in northern Laos through the Ladner club, with others, in the Rotary led Adopt-A-Village program.

 

Lack of knowledge about the importance and true nutritional value of local food plants is one of the barriers to better nutrition in many impoverished communities. For the past seven years the Food Plant Solutions Rotarian Action Group has been supporting Rotary clubs address malnutrition, hunger and food security through the use of readily available local food plants.

 

Among the 350,000 subsistence farmers and fishermen living in near poverty on the island of Ukerewe in Lake Victoria, Tanzania, most school children walk long distances on empty stomachs to get to school each day and have little to eat when they get home after school. With the support of Rotarians, three local schools have established environmental clubs so children can learn how to protect their environment and practice sustainable farming.

 

Students and their teachers on Ukerewe island have worked outside school time to transform sections of their school compounds for growing cereal crops such as maize and sorghum and vegetables such as egg plants, spinach and amaranths. Harvests of these crops have not only provided breakfast for the entire school, the excess produce has been sold to generate funds to buy pencils, rubber, paper and soap and buy bags of sugar. The three schools also planted 35,000 trees in nurseries, some bearing fruit such as mango and papaya. Training in agroforestry practices, use of green and farm yard manure, planting of cover crops, crop rotation, use of liquid manure and mulching is provided to students, but later extended to teachers and parents.

Darcy and Doug