Our district was recently awarded our first ever Global Grant Scholarship. The recipient is Natalie Hodde, an OSU graduate with a history of volunteering around the world and a passion for clean water and sanitation. In her own words, she intends to work in these areas after graduation from her Master’s program, “By pursuing work with an organization or NGO that designs and implements safe water solutions in a way that empowers the people they are designed to benefit. This means, partnering with the people of the given community and giving them ownership of the process in order to make it sustainable.”Her personal goals are well aligned with Rotary’s water and sanitation goals, and even include sustainability. She is a great fit with who we are as Rotarians. By providing this scholarship, we have invested in someone who could spend the next four decades advancing Rotary’s goals.
The Stillwater Frontier, Stillwater, Stillwater Centennial, and Edmond clubs provided financial support to the scholarship. Between club contributions, district designated funds from our district, and matching funds from TRF, we put together a $32,500 scholarship that covered most of the tuition and fees for Natalie to spend a year earning her Master’s degree at the University of Edinburgh.
You may follow her adventures in Scotland on her blog. Be sure to bookmark it and check-in with her from time-to-time. Click here to read her first entry. You may also subscribe to her blog to receive update notifications.