As I’ve said many times before, one of the most important ways that Rotary Action Groups can help individual Rotarians, Rotaractors, and their clubs is to help in developing global grant projects. The members of every club within the Rotary world know the needs of their local communities, and when they identify a need, they usually know exactly how to bring the right resources together to solve the problem.
However, how do you solve the problem when it’s a continent, or maybe even half-world, away? One of the first tasks is to identify like-minded Rotary Clubs in other countries that might be interested in working with you and your club. I want to share with you a not particularly well-known way to help make the right connections: project fairs.
Each year Rotary Districts around the world sponsor project fairs. These are multi-day events that are conducted either in person or virtually. They’re very similar to trade fairs in which vendors come to sell their products and services. In this case, the “for sale” items aren’t paintings, or clothing, or food, they’re project opportunities. The “vendors” at Rotary project fairs are sharing their plans for Rotary global grants in the various areas of focus. Generally, they’re looking for support for their projects. That support can come in various forms, including:
DDF
Club funds
Volunteers with relevant project expertise.
Wally Gardiner, a RAGCED Cadre from High River, Alberta, Canada recently attended a project fair in Armenia, Colombia. He says that many clubs came to the event with global grant projects requiring funding, and participants were able to connect with other clubs to go needed funding. Wally said that in addition to the usual exhibits, the sponsors had a large bell. Whenever exhibitors either obtained funding or other support, the hosts rang the bell: the sound of success at a project fair!
If you’re looking for a good project in a particular area of focus and in a certain geographic region, project fairs could be a great way to make the right connection. Some are held virtually so there’s no need to travel. Others are held in person. Attending an in-person project fair could be expensive, but what isn’t well-known is that district grant money can be used to pay for a trip to a project fair.
Besides an opportunity to make connections with like-minded Rotarians, project fairs offer other benefits. They’re a great place to connect with Rotary Foundation CADRE members – people with expertise in various aspects of global grant projects. In many cases, project fairs also include educational programs. As an example, RAGCED participated in an online webinar during the West Africa Project Fair held in November 2023 in Guinea, Africa.
RAGCED has participated in several project fairs this Rotary year and plans to be a part of upcoming ones.
How do you and your fellow club members find out about project fairs? A good starting point is to visit the project fairs page at Rotary.org: https://my.rotary.org/en/exchange-ideas/project-fairs. Here’s a list of upcoming project fairs:
District 4195 (Mexico) – a virtual event (February 2024)
District 4465 (Peru) – a virtual event (March 15 – 16, 2024)
District 4400 (Manta, Ecuador) – in person (April 11 – 13, 2024)
District 2120 (Bari, Italy) – in person (April 24 – 28, 2024)
District 9210 (Kariba, Zimbabwe) – in person (May 1 – 4, 2024).
You can also learn about upcoming project fairs by sending a message to rotary.service@rotary.org.
If you’d like to learn more about what RAGCED is doing in this area, please contact PDG Nick Frankle, the head of our Operations Committee. You can reach Nick at operations@ragced.org. You can also connect with our CADRE team at cadre@ragced.org.