Global Grants

ENVIRONMENTAL GLOBAL GRANTS

How can we help?

Are you looking for the Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group (ESRAG) to help with your club’s global grant application?

ESRAG members are happy to share their technical expertise, guidance, and experience to help clubs and districts plan implement impactful environmental global grant projects. We are experienced Rotary members and nonmembers around the world who are dedicated to helping clubs and districts develop sustainable environmental projects.

Useful documentation

This is where you’ll find the files and information you need to start on your global grant.

Four Environment Global Objectives

To be eligible for a global grant, a project needs to fit at least one of the four Rotary objectives for the environment. The guidelines include twelve Action Goals that applicants can address under the Objectives. Action Goals 1-8 are essentially the same as in the July 2021 policy statement. New action goals 9-12 invite applicants to address land use planning, enhancing environmental innovation, graduate school scholarships for environmental careers, and including the environment in Global Grant projects that advance other Rotary humanitarian Areas of Focus in protected natural areas. The policy’s interdisciplinary approach is most welcome.

Most noteworthy is the frequent discussion of advocacy, going beyond just education and awareness-building. Past RI presidents Ian Riseley and Barry Rassin have both encouraged advocacy in your local communities as part of Rotarian service. “When you attend a community meeting,” Ian says, “wear your Rotary pin; it will make a difference in how they listen when you speak.” The guidelines also underscore the importance of working with appropriate governmental agencies and NGOs in community assessment, permitting, funding, and institutionalizing the interventions of the project so that the change is long-lasting and sustainable. This is a departure from Rotary’s historic preference to develop projects without engaging government.

Here are The Rotary Foundation’s four ‘environment global objectives:

1. Nature and Biodiversity Conservation: We need to strengthen biodiversity and ecosystems as we pursue food, water, shelter, consumption, and production, because “biodiversity loss affects our planet at every scale, and because we are connected ecologically [to] nearly every family of organisms.”
2. Climate Change Mitigation by reducing human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) accumulation in the atmosphere. GHGs include not just CO2, but also methane, and the CFCs family, which is less prevalent but more potent. Projects should reduce sources, support sinks, and prevent releases. Applicants are encouraged to work on nature-based solutions.
3. Sustainable Livelihoods means shrinking our ecological footprint so communities’ economic wellbeing is protected by flourishing natural systems, healthy soils, safe water and climate adaptation.
4. Environmental Equity means “having a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment to live in,” with an extra obligation to marginalized communities that suffer disproportionate impacts and/or have been historically disenfranchised.

Community Assessment: The First Step

A Community Assessment led by the host community is an ESSENTIAL first step to any Global Grant application. This policy spells out how to combine enquiry about the community’s goals and its cultural, technical, and financial conditions with an analysis of the specific environmental challenges. Effective training and education in support of your project should be in the local language and driven by needs identified in the community assessment. The assessment builds community buy-in. This assessment must drive your project plan.

The policy describes four key strategies to ensure environmentally sustainable projects:

• Respecting local and indigenous knowledge and sharing information collaboratively;
• Engaging the local environmental advocates as partners;
• Institutionalizing progress by working with appropriate government entities; and
• Ensuring adequate funding for the project and beyond so it will be self-sustaining beyond the grant term. Revolving loan funds are a possible source of support.

Significantly, the guidelines encourage working with relevant government agencies to develop the Community and Environmental Assessments.

Evaluation: It is essential to gather baseline data at the assessment phase, to be able to measure success throughout. ESRAG’s iRotree app, downloadable to your phone, can help you record that information. You will also need to identify environmental threats, cultural practices that should inform the project, and the environmental changes – both good and bad – that you expect. On pp.20-21, the policy gives detailed guidance around data collection for baseline, measuring interim progress to allow for revisions, and post- project results to enable improvement, sharing and scaling.

Applicants need to review land ownership around the intervention, the end-of-life management of technologies, and the impact of the project beyond its site.

Budget: The guidelines recommend that you spend more on people than hardware, hire local experts and technicians, and develop co-funding partners beyond Rotary. Source environmentally sustainable materials locally, being clear about ownership and management. Allocate 10% of your budget for evaluation.