October 16, 2002
TC Rotary Club raising funds to help fight polio
Local organization sets goal of $50,000
By LISA PERKINS
Herald staff writer
Northern Michigan Rotary Clubs are joining Rotarians worldwide in reaching out to their local communities to raise critically needed funds to eradicate polio by 2005. Members of the Traverse City Tuesday noon club have set a goal of raising $50,000 over the next few weeks in a campaign kicked off in September.
Rotary International set the 2005 date for eradication of the disease when they took on the world-wide problem in 1985. In 2001, there were no more than 600 cases of the disease reported worldwide, a 99.8 percent decrease from the 350,000 annual cases estimated in 1988.
Rotary has raised more than $240 million in the campaign also funded by the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Four to one matching grants have been provided by the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
"We have come a long way, but we are not quite there yet," said Wes Nelson, president of the local club, noting that the World Health Organization estimates a total of $1 billion U.S. dollars are required between 2002-2005 to ensure delivery of more than 6 billion doses of oral polio vaccine to 600 million children worldwide.
"No child today should ever have to suffer from polio as it is totally preventable. If we raise this money now, we are preventing future generations from suffering this age-old scourge," said Frank Stulen, long time Traverse City Rotarian and head of the club's fund raising effort.
While Nelson applauds the fund raising efforts for the "Fulfilling Our Promise: Eradicate Polio" campaign, he is quick to note that it is just one of many projects the club sponsors.
"Rotary is a service club, we do things on a local level as well as an international level," said Nelson.
"Recently we have helped fund supplying a water source for a town in Nepal, building a school and getting water to an orphanage in Honduras. We are also involved in the Wheelchair Foundation which supplies wheelchairs to people around the world who have been disabled by disease or accident."
Nelson instituted donating funding to the wheelchair program as an honorarium for speakers and guests of the club.
"We used to give them baskets with jam and the like, but now we give them a personalized certificate indicating that someone will receive a wheelchair on their behalf. We have gotten a lot of good comments. This is certainly more meaningful," said Nelson who plans to fund up to 40 wheelchairs this year.
Each donation of $75 is matched by the Wheelchair Foundation which has delivered more than 34,000 wheelchairs to people in 80 countries since June 2000.