Wrekin Rotary Club fundraiser
Members of Wrekin Rotary Club met last week to eat pizza and salad and hear former Club President and District Governor Ken Wagstaffe talk about the Rotary Foundation – and in the process raised £356 for the Foundation.
Most people who aren’t Rotarians (and even some who are!) don’t know that the Rotary Foundation was a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which has reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent since its first project in 1979. Its partners include the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the Gates Foundation, the philanthropic trust set up by Bill Gates (a founder of Microsoft) and his wife Melinda.
The Gates Foundation is particularly important for Rotary because it doesn’t just double the amounts Rotarians raise for the Rotary Foundation’s End Polio Now initiative but triples it.
Wild polio is now endemic only in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The figure of 99 new cases in 2024 was disappointing because it was more than in 2023 but the good news is that up to 10 April, there have been only three new cases this year.
Apart from working to eradicate polio, the Rotary Foundation UK transforms the voluntary donations given by Clubs and individual Rotarians into other service projects that change lives locally as well as internationally. It has seven areas of focus including providing clean water, sanitation and hygiene, supporting education and protecting the environment.
