Specialists in the field
You learned of a need in a community. Now deploy the experts: a vocational training team.
Ramona Delmas shares a photo of a tiny infant on its back, bathed in the blue light of a therapy cradle used to treat jaundice. The device was donated through a long-term initiative that has revolutionized maternal and pediatric care at a hospital in Ángel Albino Corzo in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
The Rotary Club of Bishop Sunrise in California provided the machine to the facility. “Within three days, we had our first baby,” beams Delmas, a club member. “That machine turned this into a regional pediatric hospital in addition to an OB-GYN hospital.”
The global grant project, sponsored by the Bishop Sunrise club and the Rotary Club of Oriente de Tuxtla Gutiérrez, included multiple vocational training team visits to Chiapas over several years beginning in 2019. During the initial visit, medical professionals from California taught local doctors, midwives, nurses, and medical students emergency obstetrics skills and supplied equipment to support maternal care.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced a pause in the project, yet many doctors learned of the new equipment at the hospital and began traveling from all over to perform their surgeries there. As a result, the California team scrapped a plan to perform elective surgeries during a return visit because the abundance of local doctors made it unnecessary. The project shifted instead to creating a pediatric unit after a new community assessment.
The Rotary clubs of Bishop Sunrise, California; and Oriente de Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, Mexico, organized vocational training team visits to Chiapas over several years beginning in 2019
Courtesy of Ramona Delmas
Delmas praises this ability to pivot and notes the lasting relationships that have resulted from the team visits. “The doctors, nurses, and midwives there can talk to our doctors in Bishop any day of the week,” she says.
By organizing vocational training teams, Rotary clubs can arrange for a group of professionals to visit another country to teach local professionals in a particular field or learn more about their own. Teams should have at least three members, including a team leader who is a Rotary member. Everyone on the team should have at least two years of related work experience.
The team’s activities must align with the goals of an area of focus and adhere to The Rotary Foundation’s conditions to qualify for a global grant. In addition, the team should address a need identified by the local community.
Preventing wildfires in Portugal
That was a priority for Gary Morgan, a member of the Rotary Club of Ballarat South, Australia. A decorated member of Forestry Australia, Morgan is well connected in the international fraternity of forest fire management. At the request of district officers, he explored setting up a vocational training team to help prevent wildfires overseas. He decided to focus on Portugal, where a devastating fire season in 2017 had caused widespread damage and loss of life. Politicians were demanding a change in fire management practices.
“I’ve known the people in charge there [Portugal] for quite some time, and that made it easy,” Morgan says. “We had many online conversations before I even approached people for a team to make sure we really understood the situation, what they wanted, and why they wanted it.”
The team, supported by a global grant co-sponsored by the Rotary Club of Ponta Delgada S. Miguel (Açores), focused on methods of prescribed burns to mitigate wildfires, particularly in areas with eucalyptus, highly flammable trees native to Australia that also grow in rural Portugal.
Morgan recommends that teams be a manageable size and include people with the variety of skills needed to deliver on the objectives. His team included individuals with practical experience in fire suppression, an ability to manage people, a background in research, and an understanding of the policy side of fire management. He kept the team to four so all members could fit into one vehicle during trips into the field.
Delmas and Morgan both have found value in including professionals who are not members of Rotary. As the only Rotarian on her team, Delmas says nonmembers opened the project to greater funding and publicity.
“They learned so much, they became ambassadors for Rotary,” she says. “The next thing I knew, they were talking about Rotary to everyone. As a result, we received funding from organizations that we might not have.”
Delmas says vocational training teams enhance any grant project. “It’s hard for me to visualize a Rotary project without one.”
This story originally appeared in the February 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.