Progress Report
Following members of the Adelaide and Prospect Rotary Clubs visiting Davao City in the Southern Philippines in 2014 and establishing a sister club agreement with the Rotary Clubs of East Davao (RCED) and Waling-Waling Davao (RCWWD); our consortium of four Clubs successfully implemented 4 District Grant projects in health and education between 2015 and 2017. Then, based on this experience, the clubs applied for a US $100,000 Global Grant project. RCA and RCP contributed US$15,000 while the remaining US$85,000 came from the Rotary Foundation, both directly and via the Foundation funds held by the Districts (9500 and 3860).
The goal of the GG project was to increase access to and improve the quality of health and education/training services for the women and children from 3 disadvantaged communities in and around Davao by:
- supporting basic education and literacy for the children in the focus communities;
- supporting maternal and child health care through assisting the Community Health Centres in the focus communities; and
- assisting the specialist regional pediatric cancer centre, service the local communities.
The GG project commenced in late 2017 and after a slow start-up in 2018 was fully functioning when COVID hit. While 2020 saw limited progress in all areas, Covid really hit in 2021 with the very regular and long shut down periods restricting opportunities for our Implementation and our Medical Mission teams to get to our targeted communities. To date, total expenditure is US $49,810 so we still have just over US $50,000 of our grant funds to spend.
During 2021, while some of the planned education activities were able to be conducted online, none of the health initiatives have been possible because of the travel restrictions. NO medical missions to our remote and targeted communities were able to be undertaken.
With all these travel restrictions and the impact of Covid, we are proposing to spend the unspent Medical Mission funds (approx US $24,000) on the production and delivery of HOME COVID KITS to households in our targeted communities. These kits will contain test kits and medications to assist and support families to manage covid infections within the family home. As this is a health community support activity, the same as the Medical Missions with exactly the same objectives, and given the changed circumstances as a result of Covid, we believe this is our best and most appropriate option to support the health and well-being of the members of our targeted communities.
Similarly, as Covid now places more demand on the Regional Pediatric Centre, the project seeks to slightly realign spending to cover about US $2,500 expenditure on upgrading the kitchen at the Centre’s residential care centre – the House of Hope. Neither of these planned changes will exceed our budget.
Before
After
