Rotarians Help

Dear Rotarians and friends:

An estimated 878 million people around the world — nearly half of them employed — live on less than US$1.25 a day. Rotarians bring economic and community development to impoverished areas through projects that provide vocational training, support local entrepreneurs and community leaders, and assist with long-term recovery in places struck by natural disaster.

Hannah Warren, a former Ambassadorial Scholar, says her Rotary experience inspired her to become a social entrepreneur. She founded Jhoole, a nonprofit business that offers impoverished women in India access to training, materials, and international markets for hand-woven goods, enabling them to earn a living wage.

With help from a Rotary Foundation grant, Jhoole acquired looms, cloth, and funds to cover training costs for weaving and sewing.   “There is no way I could be doing this [work] were it not for my Ambassadorial Scholarship,” Warren says. “Like Jhoole’s programs, Rotary scholarships are not a one-time donation; they are an investment in goodwill.”

Watch a video about Hannah Warren's work
and Rotary's focus on community and economic development:

As you finalize your charitable giving for this year, I hope you will consider The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International. Gifts like yours ensure that Rotarians can continue promoting peace, fighting disease, providing clean water, saving mothers and children, supporting education, and nurturing local economies. Every contribution, from every Rotarian, truly makes a difference.

If you have already contributed to the Annual Fund this year, please accept my thanks. Lorna and I wish you all the best this holiday season, and a new year filled with world understanding, goodwill, and peace!