Read how District 9820 worked to arrange 3 global grant projects to support farmers in the East Gippsland area recover following the disastrous 2019-20 fires.

Article by PDG Janne Speirs, Assistant Regional Rotary Foundation Chair

Global Grants not only support large international activities with sustainable, measurable outcomes in Rotary’s areas of focus, they can also support urgent community needs in your own backyard.

The disastrous 2019-2020 fires across so much of Australia, hit Victoria’s East Gippsland region with much news coverage of Mallacoota and other areas over the Christmas New Year period in particular.

Following an incredible anonymous donation to D9820 (which includes East Gippsland) of USD100,000, we were able to get three Global Grants in the order of USD85000 – USD 95000 each, approved for recovery in the region.

Two of these, coming in the last days of the prolonged drought, had a major component which assisted fire and drought affected farms in various parts of East Gippsland, providing a mix of hay, high energy fodder and salt licks for both cattle and sheep.

In what turned out to be a wonderful follow-up period, the majority of the East Gippsland area received wonderful rains throughout the latter part of 2020 and into 2021.

The result of this improved situation was a request by farmers to change the provision of fodder to the purchase of weed spray, fertilizer and seed mix for a certain sized paddock area, in order to allow farmers to regain their independence rather than continuing to rely on ‘donations’ and to provide a sustainable crop which would allow harvesting for silage or hay as well as providing immediate grazing ability. Only the remaining fodder component of the budget would be utilized.

The request was taken to the Global Grant support staff in Evanston, resulting in immediate permission being granted to allow the alteration in the scope of the fodder component to be undertaken, providing appropriate governance from The Rotary Foundation in regard to the ‘tweaking’ of the Grants.

As a result, some 43 East Gippsland farmers were able to become involved in this altered, but valuable, component of the Global Grants. Why was it so valuable? Because it showed we as Rotarians listened to the needs of those we were assisting, it was much more sustainable and lastly but most importantly, it allowed drought and fire weary farmers to regain some precious independence and positive feelings about the future.