Students sit at new desks that were provided through a grant organized by the Rotary Clubs of Bikaner, Rajasthan, India, and Kennebunk Portside, Maine, USA

By Rotary Voices staff

There’s still time to make your year-end gift to The Rotary Foundation. Here are a few ways that your support is helping to change lives all over the world:

Educating children: Rotary members in Maine, USA, and Rajasthan, India, are using a global grant to educate hundreds of children in the city of Bikaner who previously were not attending school, and to provide professional development for their teachers. Learn more about the project, which also provided desks for the students through an earlier grant.

Fighting disease: Rotary members in California, USA, and Sinkor, Monrovia, Liberia, are using Foundation grant money to train health care workers in techniques to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV and to improve their ability to diagnose and treat infected women. The success of the project is measured in lives saved. Read more about the vocational training team’s efforts.

Growing local economies: In the Esmeraldas Province of Ecuador, Rotary members have teamed up with a microfinance organization to provide small loans to poor women, teaching them to sew and bake so they can start or expand businesses. Global grant funds provide seed money for microloans and buy sewing and baking equipment for a training center where the women learn vocational skills and basic business management. Learn more about the project.

Ending polio: In 2015, wild poliovirus transmission declined to its lowest level ever, with fewer cases reported from fewer areas in fewer countries than ever before. As of 15 December, only 66 cases of the disease caused by the wild poliovirus had been reported in the two remaining endemic countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Gifts from Rotary members have funded the immunization activities that are helping us reach our goal of a polio-free world. And every dollar that Rotary commits to polio eradication is matched 2-to-1 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, tripling your impact. Watch our World Polio Day Livestream update.

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