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Our president Wei presenting certificate of appreciation in speaking at our club meeting to Tom on Canadian Rotary Collaboration for International Development (CRCID). 
 
Tom Smith from the Tsawassen club who is also an Assistant Governor for the district responsible the clubs in Vancouver gave a presentation on Canadian Rotary Collaboration for International Development (CRCID).  

Before the presentation, Tom noted that there will be breakout sessions on grants at the district conference.  He also mentioned that his club is associated with Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) at BCIT and they have a rewarding experience supporting the group of youth.  Tom encouraged the Club to explore the opportunity to support the SIFE at UBC as they will be doing a presentation to the Club in April.

Background of CRCID:  Prior to 1986, each Rotary club would go to the government for CIDA funding individually and the government found it too cumbersome and asked Rotary to form a department to organize all the requests from Rotary clubs.  Hence the start of CRCID.

One of their programs in Afghanistan includes a school project for 4,000 students and their goal is to get one million Canadian high school students to send messages to the students in Afghanistan.  Tom passed a presentation disc to Youth Program Coordinator David to coordinate with the Interacts in Richmond and there is a fundraising opportunity with a $5 bracelet that the Interacts can utilize for Afghanistan Schools.


There has been a big change in the Rotary global matching grant criteria from only supporting grades 1 through 6 in the past to grades 1 through 12 now.  The changed process only took 4 months, which was faster than the usual slow process in making changes.

CRCID matches 80% of the funds put into a program, which means that for every $1 the club puts in, it can turn into $6.30.  With the district grant and the foundation grant the $1 will turn to $3.50 and the 80% from CRCID will bring it to $6.30.  

Another major distinction between CRCID and the Rotary Foundation is that CRCID funding can be used for salaries and buildings.  One of the requirements for obtaining CRCID funding is the program has to be approved for global grant first as a government requirement to ensure there is an organization at the other end – where the program is taking place.

For the 3-year funding cycle from Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) of 2010-2013, CRCID received $3.1M out of a total of $3.575B CIDA budget, which is only 0.09% of the whole budget.  CRCID is working towards bringing that percentage up to fund more Rotary programs.

Tom noted that out of the $3.1M funding, $1.3M is spent on costs to administer and monitor the programs to meet government requirements.  The remaining $1.8M is used on 8 programs across Central American and Africa.  The Refilwe project is one of the projects in Africa that CRCID supports.

Tom encouraged the Club to learn more about CRCID by checking out the website where all the information on the programs is detailed.