A Friend of Malawi

The Great News is the Project was approved earlier in May 2004 and is now in the funding process, the next phase of a Major Matching Project process with Rotary Foundation. I'll leave the early process information in the following paragraphs on the site, for a while, to let folks observe the process of the early application process. As we get more information, as the project develops, hopefully, with lots of progress pictures, more will be added, so, please return from time to time to watch this develop.

Formerly, on Thursday, November 20th, 2003, the Board of Directors of the Grosse Ile Rotary Club embarked on a project in the foot steps of the Plaza Rotary Club of Kansas City, website is HERE, and their great leadership of William Schmidt, a member there and a former United States Peace Corps Volunteer, stationed in Malawi in the late 1960's. For visitors wanting to learn more about Malawi, please visit the Friends of Malawi website by clicking HERE. There is lots of information about the country and lots of pictures, some from the GIRC webguy, John Strain, a Malawi RPCV, like Bill Schmidt.

The Grosse Ile Rotary Club will be donating $1,500 from our own funds to Malawi Children's Village. We will request a 'matching' grant from Rotary International Foundation, which comes in at $0.50 to each of our dollars or $750. Additionally, Super District  6400 District Governor, Roberto Sanchez, and a member of our GIRC club, will donate $1,500 of his discretionary DG's fund, which will bring a true 1:1 matching donation from Rotary International Foundation. From all sources, this brings the total contribution to $5,250 for the MCV project. 

The project, spearheaded by the the Plaza Rotary Club, will focus on sanitation for the local elementary schools in the villages supported by MCV. Specifically, the public health focus of the project is to construct sanitary pit latrines to serve the school children. The total grand funds, including our contribution will be some $18,750, including the matching funds from the Rotary Foundation. The local sponsoring club will be the Rotary Club of Limbe, Limbe, Malawi, a long time supporter of MCV. Our hope is to encourage other Rotary Clubs, looking for a great vehicle for an international project, that being Malawi Children's Village.

What a wonderful project to support the activities of  the Malawi Children's Village. To contact the GIRC sponsor, John Strain, a fellow PCV in Malawi in the late 1960's, click HERE to start an email. To contact Bill Schmidt, click HERE to start an email. 

Here is a link to the Grosse Ile Rotary Club and some photographs from Bill Schmidt, click HERE.

Other Rotary Clubs are encouraged to follow this path and join to assist the support of the HIV/AIDS orphans efforts of MCV. To learn more of how your club may join the Kansas City and Grosse Rotary Clubs are supporting MCV, please contact Bill or me. Additionally, I have listed my internal documents to help jump start another Rotarian's application. They are in MS Word XP and simple TXT format:

To learn more about Malawi Children's Village, just click HERE, where MCV was featured on NBC Nightly News in July of 2002. An additional article from the Times Union, Albany, NY, about MCV is HERE. 

RPCV Frances Jones Vitaglione (Colby College'63 and Malawi PCV '64-66)  returns to Malawi and MCV, versus retiring to Florida. Read more of this wonderful person HERE.

There are many links with Rotary International and MCV on Google, click HERE with this page being the first one on the list @ 12-18-2003. How cool is that? Rotary International has a worldwide focus on support of HIV/AIDS support, click HERE for RI's page on this important subject.

For more about the Grosse Ile Rotary Club, always welcoming visitors, click HERE. 

MCV's January 12, 2004 Newsletter is HERE.