An estimated 878 million people around the world — nearly half of them employed — live on less than US$1.25 a day. Rotarians bring economic and community development to impoverished areas through projects that provide vocational training, support local entrepreneurs and community leaders, and assist with long-term recovery in places struck by natural disaster.

Hannah Warren, a former Ambassadorial Scholar, says her Rotary experience inspired her to become a social entrepreneur. She founded Jhoole, a nonprofit business that offers impoverished women in India access to training, materials, and international markets for hand-woven goods, enabling them to earn a living wage.

With help from a Rotary Foundation grant, Jhoole acquired looms, cloth, and funds to cover training costs for weaving and sewing. "There is no way I could be doing this [work] were it not for my Ambassadorial Scholarship," Warren says. "Like Jhoole's programs, Rotary scholarships are not a one-time donation; they are an investment in goodwill."