Rotary Club - Index

Rotary Club - Experience - Index

A Shared Experience 3 January 9, 2008
THE FOUNDATION MOMENT
PDG Colleen Woods
Have you ever heard the story of the
“dash?” On grave stones, a name is
engraved along with the date of birth
and the date of the death. These two
dates are separated with a dash. In that
dash, is represented all that has been
accomplished during that life time. What
will your dash say about you? Will it say
that you helped eradicate polio and
saved a child from a
life of anguish? Will it
say that you gave a
child clean water to
drink by buying a
sand filter? Make a
new year’s resolution
to support the Rotary
Foundation and give
your dash meaning.
Through the infrastructure created
originally for the Polio Eradication
initiative, 140 laboratories have been
created worldwide. These labs are now
used to fight yellow fever, meningitis,
cholera and measles.
Many Rotarians travel to other countries
on Rotary “mission trips.” Rotarians, on
behalf of our Foundation lug sand filters
to remote mountain homes in Honduras;
they travel to India or Africa to give
drops of polio vaccine; they spend time
in Belize painting class rooms or
teaching the poor of the Philippines how
to avoid malaria. Rotarians not only
contribute money but their time and their
talents to make our Foundation work.
The United Nations recently honored the
Rotary Foundation with its 2007
Humanitarian Award, in recognition of
Rotary’s significant
efforts to provide safe
water and sanitation
worldwide. RI
President Wilf
Wilkinson said, “In the
years since Rotary
has started focusing
on water we’ve learned how much can
be accomplished with relatively
little….how a single small water project,
perhaps a pump or a filter, can change
the life of a community.”
Thanks to your contributions to the Polio
Eradication program, over 2 billion
children have been immunized against
polio since the mid 1980s. In that time
five million children have been spared
being crippled and over a quarter million
deaths have been prevented.