Online tool brings Rotarians and projects together
by Diana Schoberg
The Rotarian -- November 2009
Joseph Matovu, a physician, helps provide medical care to child-headed households.
Rotary Images/Alyce Henson
U ganda’s Rakai District, home of the Rotary Club of Kalisizo, has been called the epicenter of AIDS in the country.
So a natural project for the club when it was chartered in 2002 was to reach out to children orphaned by the disease. The Rotarians were able to help only a few of these child-headed families, however – until they connected with the Rotary Club of Roma, Italy, through Rotary International’s ProjectLINK.
“Before the Rotary Club of Roma came in, we were supporting about three families. Now there are over 20 families, and more families coming in,” says Kalisizo club member Joseph Matovu.
ProjectLINK is an online database that clubs and districts can use to seek assistance for projects in need of funding, supplies, or volunteers. Clubs can post up to five projects at a time, and each one can remain on the list for up to two years. Clubs or individual Rotarians looking for service opportunities can search the database by country, project type (such as health, hunger, or water and sanitation), and kind of assistance needed.
A family of five children headed by a 12-year-old was the first the Kalisizo club helped, providing food, clothing, educational materials, and health care. When other children in the same situation asked the club for assistance, the Kalisizo Rotarians did what they could, but the real breakthrough came when past club president Margaret Ddembe heard about RI’s projects database at a district conference in 2005. She registered her club’s project, requesting money to purchase mattresses, blankets, mosquito nets, clothing, and water vessels. Ddembe was delighted when a member of the Roma club contacted her to say the club was planning to raise money for the project.
“If it wasn’t for ProjectLINK, I think there would be no way through which we would connect with the Rotary Club of Roma,” Ddembe says. “This is the beauty of being Rotarians: You can coordinate with Rotarians the world over.”
