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The Rotary Club of Evergreen submitted its first ever global grant application in January. The $150,000 grant, entitled “Young Mayan Women as Engines of Economic Growth in Guatemala through Empowerment and Education,” focuses on two areas, unlocking the potential of young women to catalyze economic and community development in their communities and throughout the country, and addressing the antiquated education system in Guatemala by demonstrating a model skills and knowledge development approach to education and literacy. The grant activities will be run primarily through the innovative Colegio Impacto, a middle school that is operated by Asociaciόn Estrella de Mar, the implementing partner in the project.This project builds on two previous Global Grants, “Guatemala Community Development through Workforce Readiness among Mayan Youth,” and “Creating Economic Opportunity and Community Development through Unlocking the ‘Girl Effect’ in Rural, Mayan, Guatemala.” However, unlike the previous grants, this will be the first in which our club will have the lead. The in-country host club will be the E-club of Lake Atitlán-Panajachel, located near Colegio Impacto in Guatemala.
Evergreen Rotarian, Ted Ning, has been the driving force in preparing this grant application, as he was with the previous grants. In addition to coordinating the writing of the application with Asociaciόn Estrella de Mar, Ted has been busily raising funds. He has visited and spoken with numerous other clubs, not only within District 5440, but in other areas of the state and country as well. To date he has obtained commitments of $34,000 from 13 clubs, including $10,000 from our own Evergreen club. This money will be leveraged into $150,000 through the use of matching funds from the districts involved (DDF) and The Rotary Foundation.
The application must now go through an extensive review process, which will likely result in some fine tuning. But, because of Ted’s experience with the two previous grants, he is optimistic that the approval will be forthcoming within this Rotary year. Thanks, Ted, for making the Rotary Club of Evergreen a true leader on the world scene.