International Projects
We take action locally and globally. These are a few of our international efforts.
Honduras
Since 2010, Rotary Club of Victoria-Harbourside has partnered with the Rotary Club of San Miguel de Heredia to enable a Rotary directed NGO Alternativas y Oportunidades (AyO) to develop an Economic Opportunities Training (EOT) program to teach new skills to impoverished women working in the public markets and suburban communities. Skills taught are basic financial literacy, goal setting, and other micro entrepreneurial skills so they could earn enough money to keep their children in school.
The program was subsequently extended to include training of high school graduates to better equip them to get jobs and to provide women with vocational training in making consumer products and providing personal service (e.g. hairdressing). Over 1500 women and their families have benefited from the program. An investment of approximately US $950,000 in Rotary Foundation grant funding has yielded an estimated increase in earnings exceeding $3 million and empowered and given pride to the women in many intangible ways.
Harbourside members have also been generous in supporting the HELP Honduras charity in sponsoring scholarships to keep children of the poorest families in school.
Images: In Tegucigalpa, one of our program recipients at work at a market. Also, a HELP Honduras scholar with Rotarian Chris.
Comayagua, Honduras
Harbourside has sponsored 5 clean water supply projects in partnership with the Comayagua Rotary Club funded with Rotary Foundation Grants between 2005 and 2010. We then continued to support the Comox and Brentwood Bay clubs develop and carry out Rotary Foundation Global Grant water and sanitation projects until 2019 when Harbourside sponsored the extension of the AyO Women’s program to two communities on the edge of Comayagua. In 2019 and 2020, 160 women were enrolled in Economic Opportunities Training (EOT) and learning a number of vocational skills. When COVID 19 occured, Harbourside members donated to start a face mask program using the skills of the EOT participants.
Images: Classroom. Handing out masks Rotarians made.
Business Training for Women near Antigua, Guatemala
A US $70,000 Rotary Foundation Grant gives basic business and financial literacy training and coaching for 9 months to 140 low income women near Antigua, Guatemala. They are provided with customized micro loans to help develop their businesses, with a goal to doubling their income over the period of one year, allowing them to move away from poverty and improve health and education for their families.
Our partners are Rotary Club of La Antigua, and Namaste Direct, (www.namastedirect.org), the NGO that delivers the program. Harbourside has been working successfully with these partners in similar programs for over 8 a decade.