ABOUT the Rotary klub Zagreb Center
Rotary club Zagreb Center was founded 22 years ago, and its members are men and women who are prominent representatives of their professions, gathered around common ideas of helping the community in which we live and helping the disadvantaged in Croatia and the world. Rotarian men and women, people with little free time and lots of obligations, are still happy to find time to help. Members, in addition to their own financial resources, donate numerous hours of charity work in order to make the world a better place in the environment they live in, but also for the disadvantaged in faraway places.
It was the first mixed gender club in the District. Throughout all the years of the club’s activity, we have awarded scholarships to more than 300 outstanding high school and university students.
In addition to regular activities to help the community, the club is also active in many emergency situations, such as earthquakes in the area of Glina, Petrinja, Sisak and Zagreb, as well as the war in Ukraine. RC Zagreb Center is particularly known for its Global Grants, and in 2016, the high school in Glina was equipped with educational equipment worth almost 100,000 euros.
This year we plan to complete the largest Global Grant in Croatia, by improving digital literacy in our primary schools through the donation of 15,000 micro:bits to 300 schools. The project is worth about 400,000 dollars. The digital literacy revolution will bring equal opportunities to small and large communities, and strengthen the capacities of elementary school students regardless of their financial status, family situation or geographic origin.
Projects of the Rotary klub Zagreb Center
Rotary Club Zagreb Centar invests long-term and strategically in charitable projects financed by donations from its members and other donors.
Goran Čačić Fund Scholarships
Rotary club Zagreb Centar recently awarded 20 new scholarships to outstanding high school and university students from the club’s ‘Gordan Čačić’ scholarship fund, which is named after our tragically deceased Rotarian friend, Major General of the Croatian Army.
Just like last year, part of the scholarships were also awarded to outstanding high school students from the high school in Glina.
From one initial scholarship, the program has grown every year and we are proud to say that so far, during the 16 years of the Fund’s operation, we have had the privilege of meeting and supporting almost 300 young, talented people. Friends from our club firmly believe that investing in promising young people is the best investment in the future of our community and society. Rotary club Zagreb Centar has chosen helping young people as its long-term strategy. In these difficult times when it is challenging to find donors, the club has found a way to award 20 scholarships, the vast majority of which are donations from the club members themselves.
In addition to monthly scholarships, which last year amounted to HRK 300,000, a special “Mitko Naumovski” cash prize was awarded four times to the best of the scholarship recipients. This award is named after our deceased friend and former president of the club, lawyer Mitko Naumovski, and is in the amount of HRK 5,000.
The total value of our Fund thus far has amounted to 3 million HRK. We are extremely proud of all the successes that our scholarship recipients have achieved so far.
Houses in Banovina
How we participate in the project.
Annual Joma concert
Rotary Club Zagreb Centar has been organizing a traditional concert promoting the Jazz Orchestra of the JOMA Music Academy for the sixth year. The orchestra is composed of students of “classical” music and is a big novelty on our music scene.
Highly valuing the gifts and talents of young pupils and music students, the Rotary Club Zagreb Center also supports the students of the Music Academy in Zagreb by actively assisting them in their artistic development. The Rotary Club Zagreb Centar, through its sponsorship of the Jazz Orchestra of the Academy of Music, is trying to encourage the opening of the Jazz Department at the Academy of Music, which would allow young musicians to be educated in the new “non-classical” musical idiom.
At this year’s concert, which takes place on 16.12. at 7 p.m., we will enjoy and sing along to eternal Christmas carols and well-known jazz standards, and we will listen to a varied program composed of compositions by Jazz greats in inspired performances by the young hopes of jazz music and a particularly dear guest from England, Simon Marlow, a singer specialized in the performance of songs by Frank Sinatra.
Other
Some of the club’s additional projects are:
– Renovating and equipping the Glina High School (electrical engineering and electronics exercises classroom, various tools, welding machines, electric motors, library equipment, measuring devices, photo equipment as well as IT and robotics equipment) value HRK 745,200
– Field demining project in the vicinity of the city of Karlovac in cooperation with AZ Fund (project value HRK 400,000)
– Aid to flooded areas (Rajevo Selo and Gunja) – financial aid for two families, donations of furniture, household appliances, donation of books and computers to the Elementary School in Gunja
– Refurbishment of the kindergarten playground Jabuka, Trnava b.b. in Zagreb (value HRK 280,000)
– International projects: building a school in Sri Lanka after the tsunami, helping to finance polio vaccinations through the Rotary Polio Plus program, buying ShelterBox packages after the earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami in Sri Lanka, and, most recently, planning stage of cooperation with the Rotary Club of Bali regarding the construction and equipping of a day hospital in Karangasem
– Various other donations, such as, for example, the donation of micro:bits to libraries in Glina and Zagreb as part of the project to furnish libraries with micro:bits for workshops and loans to help children acquire new knowledge when they do not have access to new technologies at home or at school.
The club is particularly active in working to help young people, we continuously work on an international exchange of high school students, by sending local children for a yearlong education in the USA, Japan, Brazil, Germany and/or Great Britain, and providing hospitality for young people from other countries who come to Croatia for an exchange and one year program of study.