Global Grants and the Nepal Water Project

Murray Visser, our District 5000 International Service Chair, will be discussing how the D5000 International Service Team works with local clubs to develop international projects and design global grants of higher quality and greater scale by leveraging local Rotarian expertise, establishing connections between clubs in the district and a host or international partner, and creating a network of local experts to help with project planning and the grant process.

James Ham is a board-certified emergency physician at Straub Medical Center and Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of Hawaii John A Burns School of Medicine. He is the President Elect of the Rotary Club of Honolulu Sunset, and currently serves District 5000 as a member of its International Service Team under Murray Visser and as the Global Grants Coordinator under Mark Harbinson.  He was trained at the University of Washington and Madigan Army Medical Center, and served as the Brigade Surgeon for the 130th Combat Engineer Brigade at Schofield Barracks, and in the Emergency Department at Tripler.  He attended his first Rotary meeting in 2013 in Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea, where he is still actively involved in several different water sanitation and community health projects through a small Hawaii-based nonprofit Water Hands Hope, which he is the director of.  He joined the Rotary Club of Honolulu Sunset in 2015 while helping with earthquake relief efforts in Nepal, and has served as the club’s International Service Chair, participating in nine of his club’s global grants - Slovenia, Romania (x2), India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Nepal, Malawi, and Tanzania (2019).

Check out the International Service Projects Presentation video overview of this initiative.