International Programs
International Community Service
This service includes International Scholarships, Youth Exchange, Group Study Exchange and World Community Service. Our main objective through our programs is to build understanding, goodwill and a lasting relationship with people from different cultures and background. The objective may be accomplished through short vocational visits, long and short term exchange studies or assisting less fortunate communities around the world to a better life.
Youth Exchange
Chair: Scott Tizzard
Like the Ambassadorial Scholarship, this program has a long history and since its inception it has sent over 70,000 students worldwide, offering approximately 8,000 students annually the opportunity live and study in another country for a year. The experience supports a lifetime of understanding and goodwill for both students and members of the participating clubs.
Our Club has a long standing relationship with Western Canada High School, and this is where we select all our outbound students and place our inbound students. We appreciate the school for supporting the program.
For many years our Club hosted two inbound students while sending out two students from Calgary. However, in recent years we have sponsored one exchange student due to the fact that there seemed to be a shortage of students applying for the program, and host families are harder to find. As the coming year is going to be slower for the exchange committee, it gives us a chance to examine the program and how to promote it better in the future. The committee believes the program can be improved with new ideas and different incentives.
In our Club, we have a policy of offering the students three months to live with a family after which he or she moves to another family to allow more diversification and experience. Many host families have expressed appreciation for the invaluable experience of having a foreign student live with them, and often the relationship lasts a lifetime.
Group Study Exchange
Chair: Kimberly Van Vliet
This program deals mainly with exchange of vocational ideas among young professionals from different countries. It is a Rotary Foundation initiative where a District selects five to six young professionals, not necessarily Rotarians, and sends them overseas for a period of five to six weeks to pair with similar professionals of similar vocations. During the period the team will have attended a number of Rotary functions and meetings where there will be ample opportunities to meet and talk to many Rotarians about their vocations, and hopefully develop life long relationships and contacts.
World Community Service (WCS)
Chair: Walter Haessel
The WCS is one of the most exciting and active international programs in the Club where projects ranged from a few thousand to multi-million dollars covering more than two dozen projects in almost all continents. In 2008-2009, our Board approved a budget of $245,000, including some funds allocated but not spent in previous years. Many of our projects are multi-year projects due to the fact that implementation moves slower in the international arena, and it takes longer to get funding and to properly assess projects.
Our projects are divided into three groups; Signature Legacy projects, Non Legacy projects and projects supporting other Rotary clubs
Among the big projects, the Signature Legacy projects top the chart with an estimated eventual cost of over $3 million with our Club contribution of about $400,000 ($170,000 in 2008-2009). These projects are all water related with a strong emphasis on supporting Centre for Affordable Water & Sanitation Technology (CAWST) and Water Expertise & Training Centres (WETC). With the technologies developed by these centers, we have extended our Signature Legacy to cover water projects in Indonesia, Cambodia and Uganda. Most of these projects use bio-sand filtration for surface water to offer clean drinking water to thousands of people in very needy areas. The system is simple, relatively cheap to manufacture and the technology is transferable for future generations, thus fulfilling our goal for sustainability.
Taking Rotary Assistance to Children & Communities (TRACC) leads the second set of projects involving communities in Uganda and Tanzania. The TRACC project in Uganda, with our Club’s contribution of $40,000, received a 3-H grant from Rotary International of $300,000 a 10 to 1 leverage! A special thanks is in order for our champions, Garth and Ann Toombs, who worked tirelessly on these projects and earned Garth a well deserved “Service Above Self” award from Rotary International.
The Non Legacy projects had a budget of $110,000, providing a total of $500,000 with matching grants. Most of the projects are related to TRACC, with some funds going to support mosquito nets in West Africa and Dr. Harder Pediatric Surgery in Ecuador.
The projects supporting other clubs receives $25,000 from our budget and provides about 10% of the total costs, with grants and other clubs’ contributions. These projects range from Hospital building in India to purchasing Spanish/English Dictionaries for schools in Mexico.
Behind all these projects there are very dedicated Rotarians who stepped up and offered their time, energy and wisdom to make lives better for the less fortunate. We give thanks to champions like Lloyd Flood, Aldo Brussoni, Charles Pratt, Al McMillan, Barb Young, Walter Haessel, Garth Toombs, Tom Loucks and many others.
We have developed a system to screen all projects by the WCS sub-committee, and then all eligible projects will be presented to the WCS committee for approval and eventually presented to the Board for final approval.
As mentioned before this is a very busy program and Walter Haessel has been an invaluable leader for WCS in handling all that is going on. We are also very fortunate that all members of the committee are just as dedicated in conducting the work to make the world a better place.
Goals for World Community Service Funded Projects