Rotary Club of Andover

What is The Rotary Foundation?

The Rotary Foundation is the Rotary movement's main charity, giving around £140 million (USD 227m) in Rotary year 2007/8 to educational, cultural and humanitarian programmes which promote international understanding.

More information about The Rotary Foundation is available by visiting the Foundation pages at Rotary International's website.

A Brief Overview

PolioPlus Since the inception of this programme in 1985, Rotary has contributed many millions of pounds to pay for the immunization of over 2 billion children in 122 different countries. Rotary's target is the complete eradication of this crippling disease.

We have also responded to the Bill & Melinda Gates challenge to contribute an additional $1,000 per year for the next three years. The money raised by Rotary clubs world-wide in this challenge will be matched by Bill Gates in a final push to eradicate polio.

Health, Hunger and Humanity Grants fund large-scale projects over one to three years that enhance health, help alleviate hunger or improve human development. Since 1978, 234 major projects in 61 countries have been funded. In addition, further grants have been awarded to support the planning and preparation of the major projects.

Matching Grants provide matching funds for international service projects organised by Rotary clubs and districts. In 1999-2000 almost two thousand grants were awarded to new projects in 115 countries. In addition funding was awarded to approved projects in countries where Rotary clubs were unable to provide significant support and oversight and to individual Rotarians volunteering their services in a country other than their own.

In 2004, here in Andover, on behalf of four European Clubs we successfully applied for a Matching Grant to fund our Gulu project . Unfortunately however this particular project had to be terminated in 2008 due to local circumstances on the ground.

Rotary Peace Programmes contribute to the cost of international conferences aimed at conflict resolution and ways of enhancing the search for peace.

Through Ambassadorial Scholarships, the Rotary Foundation sponsors one of the largest and most international scholarship programmes in the world.

Group Study Exchanges enable teams of non-Rotarians from a variety of vocations to travel to another country/rotary district for educational and cultural development.

In Andover, in addition to contributing substantial funding for the above purposes, we have contributed funds to the Abrizo Warboys Children's Orphanage in Brazil and hosted visiting Group Study Exchange Teams from Malaysia, Montana (USA), Poona (India), Washington State & British Columbia (USA & Canada)and most recently Argentina, with our own team returning from there in June 2009.