Two years ago, U.S. Rotary members in Maine set out to improve the education system in Bikaner, Rajasthan, an Indian city near the border of Pakistan.

The Rotary Club of Kennebunk Portside chose Bikaner because club member Rohit Mehta was originally from the area and had connections there. Mehta put the club in contact with Rotarians in India to provide desks for four government-run schools.

But when community leaders returned with a request for more desks, the Maine Rotarians decided they had to think bigger. The Rotary Foundation had rolled out its new grant model, which required that the club do more than just purchase school furniture to qualify for global grant funding. Club leaders put their heads together and turned a simple project to provide school desks into a global grant project by adding a campaign to recruit new students and professional development for teachers.

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On the third-largest island in Fiji, 17-year-old Asenaca Sepa dreams of becoming a nurse. Her classmate, Laisenia Kidia, wants to study marine biology. The teens are students at Bucalevu Secondary School on Taveuni Island. Its rich soil and abundant flora have earned it the nickname "the garden island." Waterfalls and breathtaking sunsets make Taveuni a travel destination, yet besides encounters with tourists, the islanders live in relative isolation. The government is the main employer; most other jobs involve unskilled agricultural labor. Only about 30 percent of students graduate from high school. About 10 percent go to university. Poverty and poor infrastructure limit access to advanced technology.

 

For thousands of years, the Batwa Pygmies lived among the silverback mountain gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest of southwest Uganda. But in 1992, the forest was declared a World Heritage Site to protect the endangered silverback, and the Batwa lost their home.

Forced to transition from hunter-gatherers to farmers, they did not adapt well, and their very survival was threatened.

Over the years, Rotary members in the United States, Uganda, and other parts of the world helped with efforts to aid the Batwa. Most recently, those efforts have focused on the creation of a nursing school to serve the entire southwestern part of the country.

Dr. Scott Kellermann, a physician and Rotary member from California, USA, discovered the plight of the Batwa in 2000, when he and his wife, Carol, traveled to the area as medical missionaries to assess the indigenous people's needs. He describes the situation they found: "Abject poverty. No access to health care, no access to education, no clean water, no sanitation, land insecurity, and food insecurity."

The Kellermanns' survey found that 38 percent of the Batwa died before the age of five -- twice the rate of Uganda as a whole -- and that the average life expectancy was 28.

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