Rotary
Club of Scarborough W.A (Inc.)
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'Service above Self'
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• 'Service above Self'
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 | In 1998, District 5360 (Canada) governor nominee Chuck Masur and his wife, Joanne, found a way to involve non-Rotarians in Rotary activities through the "Pennies for Polio" project. District 5360 Rotarians and their friends and families placed coin-collection cans in homes, schools, and businesses. District 5370 joined the effort, and shortly thereafter, districts across Canada and the northern United States followed. All funds collected were matched one-to-one by The Rotary Foundation. Canadian contributions, including the TRF match, were matched further by a C$1.4 million contribution from the Canadian International Development Agency, resulting in a nearly six-to-one match of the original contributions. More than C$2.5 million was raised, with all funds supporting National Immunization Days in Togo, Ethiopia, Cote d'Ivoire, Angola, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria. |
| In 1999, more than 100,000 Indian Rotary members and their families joined the government of India in immunizing more than 130 million children on one day, signaling the largest public health event ever in the world. |
| In 1996 and 1997, Rotarians in Angola led a campaign to solicit corporate jets, helicopters, and vehicles to move vaccine through Angola's land mine-infested countryside. Additional volunteers mobilized by a single Rotary club helped the government reach 80 percent of its target population of children under five years of age. |
| During the late 1980s, 11,000 Rotarians in Peru volunteered in a massive drive to eliminate the virus in one of the last South American countries in which polio still existed. Rotary volunteers assisted national health care workers in door-to-door immunization drives, transporting health care workers to remote vaccination centers, analyzing data, and publicizing the immunization days to raise awareness of the final assault against the crippling disease. |
| In countries where there are no Rotary clubs, like Somalia, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam, the PolioPlus program not only funded vaccines and promotional materials for National Immunization Days, it also provided on-site volunteer assistance from neighboring countries to assist national authorities in carrying out eradication exercises. |
| After extensive efforts to eradicate polio in Cambodia, health officials tracked the remaining pockets of polio to children living on the waterways, who had been missed by the previously held National Immunization Days. Rotary volunteers joined health officials in a boat-to-boat follow-up campaign to successfully reach this population and wipe out the virus. |
| In many developing countries, methods of communication vary from street plays to parades. Rotary members in India and Pakistan performed street dramas and organized rallies to educate parents about the need to immunize their children against polio. |
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