Projects

Through Foundation grants and programs, Rotarians and other contributors can help change the world. They can finance a well for a village that lacks clean water, improve the environment, or provide scholarships to educate the next generation. The grants and programs available to Rotarians allow them to realize Rotary’s humanitarian mission throughout the world, including its number-one goal of eradicating polio.

Inocenti Foundation and the collaboration with Rotary Club Bistrita Nosa

The humanitarian Foundation “INOCENŢI” is a private juridical entity, nongovernmental, nonaffiliated politically and non profit foundation.

The Mission of Inocenti Foundation is to offer support to children and families who are in difficult situations in order to help them have a better life.
For this purpose our foundation provides values and principles from the International Convention for Children Rights. The Foundation was created to provide specialized social services, educational programs and to offer donations consisting in products, necessary for improving health and quality of life for Romanian children and families.

Inocenti Foundation runs 4 programs in Bistrita Nasaud County and one program in Bucharest, addressed to children and their families, in difficult situations.
The purpose of the programs is to stimulate children in order to reduce the consequences of institutionalizations, prevent parental abandonment and offer recovery therapies for disabled children and support (re) integration in school and society.

Two of the programs, “Life child programs”, are functioning in two pediatric hospitals where they offer services to children who are abandoned, children who are confronted with high risk of abandonment or children who are staying in hospital for a long periods of time, with their mothers or not, for medical or nonmedical reasons.
„Literacy” is an early education program designed for post-institutionalized children who have difficulties in communication and establishing relationships.
Another one is a program for “school integration” and it addresses a Rroma children group from Bistrita, who benefit from support for school integration, adapted to their needs and possibilities and support for integration in community.
The „Me and my family” and „Early intervention” programs are addressed to disabled children and offers recovery therapies and individualized programs for education and integration in special schools.
Beside these programs we organize periodically activities, like:

  • „Reading day” for children and parents;
  • „The Olympics of Innocents” – event from the category of „Special Olympics”, for disabled children from Bistrita Nasaud County;
  • „St. Nicholas Gala for disabled children” – charity event;
  • Parties and celebrations on international children’s day, Christmas, Easter, etc.;
  • For more information about our activity we invite you to visit our webpage www.inocenti.ro.

Beginning with the spring of 2008 we benefited from the support of Rotary Club Bistrita Nosa for sustaining some of the activities that we organize in partnership, for the benefit of our community. Here there are some of the most important commune projects:

  • Charity Gala: “St. Nicholas for disabled children”, organized by Inocenti Foundation and supported by the participation of some of the members of Rotary Club Bistrita Nosa;
  • Humanitarian transportation to the Preventoriu in Ilisua, containing donations in food, clothes, donated by a member of Rotary Club Bistrita Nosa and Inocenti Foundation and transported with the support of another voluntary member of the club;
  • “The Olympics of Innocents” – event possible by donations in money done by two of the members of the club. The promotional materials were done by another two of the members of the club with the support of the Clipart Company.
  • “The wheelchair project” – the Rotary Club Bistrita Nosa bought 10 wheelchairs for disabled children and another two from the German Forum, which were transferred to Inocenti Foundation with the purpose of being donated or lent to children and adults with mobility problems.
  • Matching grant. Rotary Club Bistrita Nosa initiated at the beginning of 2009, the procedures for a matching grant in partnership with Rotary Club from Esslingen, for buying equipments and materials necessary for providing recovery therapies and psychological tests that will be used by the specialists from Inocenti Foundation for the benefit of disabled children from Bistrita Nasaud County.

PolioPlus

To eradicate polio, Rotarians have mobilized by the hundreds of thousands. They’re working to ensure that children are immunized against this crippling disease and that surveillance is strong despite the poor infrastructure, extreme poverty, and civil strife of many countries. Since the PolioPlus program’s inception in 1985, more than two billion children have received the oral polio vaccine.

Humanitarian Grants Program

Disaster Recovery – Allows Rotarians to donate money in response to specific disasters. Funds are distributed to local committees to support recovery efforts. The program was created in 2005-06, and the Foundation currently administers four Disaster Recovery accounts: Hurricanes Stan and Wilma ( Guatemala and Mexico), Hurricane Wilma (United States), the Earthquake in India and Pakistan, and Solidarity in South Asia. Total contributions to the accounts were $6.4 million.

District Simplified Grants – Support the service activities of districts locally and abroad.

Health, Hunger and Humanity (3-H) Grants – Fund large-scale, two- to four-year projects that improve health, alleviate hunger, or promote human development.

Matching Grants – Provide matching funds for the international service projects of Rotary clubs and districts.

Educational Programs

Ambassadorial Scholarships – The Foundation sponsors one of the largest international scholarship programs in the world. Scholars study in a different country, where they serve as unofficial ambassadors of goodwill. Since 1947, more than 47,000 scholars from 110 countries have received scholarships of more than $476 million through The Rotary Foundation.

Group Study Exchange (GSE) – Annual awards are made to paired Rotary districts to cover travel expenses for a team of non-Rotarians from a variety of professions. Rotarian hosts organize a four- to six-week itinerary of vocational, educational, and cultural points of interest. Since 1965, more than 57,000 individuals (almost 12,000 teams) from 100 countries have participated at a cost of more than $92 million.

Rotary World Peace Fellowships – Each year, up to 110 scholars are sponsored to study at one of the seven Rotary Centers for International Studies in peace and conflict resolution for a master’s-level degree.