International Projects

Period Poverty Project

The latest project we are planning with Village by Village is a "Period Poverty" project in a few remote villages in Togo. Currently many girls in remote African communities stop going to school when they reach puberty because of issues with starting menstruation - this is happening earlier and earlier as the age of starting puberty reduces. 

This project aims to address these issues to allow these girls to continue in education. All the research shows that staying in education longer significantly reduces early age pregnancies and reduces the average number of children born to women in these communities. This allows these women to take a greater role in the future of their communities. Our current fund-raising activities are directed towards this project. 

Village by Village   https://villagebyvillage.org.uk/

The Rotary Club of Derby have been working alongside a charity called Village by Village in Ghana. During the Club's Centenary Year we supported a Girl Empowerment programme which was a huge success. 

Our fundraising efforts have supported many projects in Ghana. We were then able to support a school in Abo Abo in Ghana to have safe drinking water. Our partners, Village by Village had provided new handwashing facilities for the school through their Clean Hands Save Lives programme which saw the introduction of water tanks to collect rainwater that children could use to wash their hands at school, water was collected into large water butts. This caused a problem because children were drinking water which, while safe to wash with, wasn't the best to drink, as it washed off the roof where there were dead animals or animal faeces. 

The Club, through their fundraising efforts which include their Fun Wine Quiz, as well as a matching grant from Rotary Foundation ensured that the amount of harvested water was doubled, that the water was made safe through the correct filtration systems and that a new push tap was installed to remove any waste by children leaving the tap running.

Village by Village Tech-to-Teach project

The committee has agreed to apply for a District grant for this Rotary year for a “Tech2Teach” project in Ghana, and an outline application was submitted in June 2023. Hopefully a decision will be made by District prior to the end of September as to whether our project has been selected for the next stage – a more detailed, fully costed proposal.  Because of the Coronavirus pandemic, schools in Ghana closed overnight, with virtually no support offered to remote rural communities. Without the protective environment of school, children were more vulnerable to abuse or exploitation. When schools reopened, about a year later, many children had fallen far behind in terms of literacy and numeracy. Many also suffered from “learning loss”, which means they had forgotten much of what they had learned in schools before the pandemic. This put them at a huge disadvantage when they returned to school.

Support for Loum Memorial School in Farato Village in Gambia: 

We provided stationery for this school in Gambia, via a Gambian man living in the UK, who runs a non-registered charity providing support to poor children in Gambia. One of our International members, Charlotte McVitty has been personally supporting his efforts, and coordinated this project on our behalf. The photo below is of two teachers at the school, who received the goods. We also have videos of the school children thanking us for the stationery. We contributed just less than £400 for this project. Most of this project was carried out in the previous Rotary Year