By: Ashish Sarkar, RCAA Rotary Foundation Chair
As our Club prepares to celebrate Annual Polio Day on October 23, I am going to make a special request to you for your individual support of this worthwhile event. As you are aware, although this dreadful disease has been eradicated in most of the world, it remains a menace in pockets of the world, namely in two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan. A third country, Nigeria, just completed a 3-year stint without any new cases of Polio for the second time.
The efforts of Rotary Foundation in conjunction with its partners: UNICEF, CDC, WHO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are dedicated to eradicating this dreadful disease from the face of the earth. Many national governments are supporting these Partners, including Rotary, to the tune of $2 billion over the next 3 years. Rotary Foundation’s commitment is $50 million per year over the next three years, which is an increase of $15 million. Its previous commitment was $35 million a year. This amount is typically raised with the contributions from 1.3 million Rotarians around the world. The Gates Foundation matches each dollar of your Polio donations with 2:1 match.
Because of this increase in our commitment, each of us must dig a little bit deeper in our pockets and give whatever we can to fight this disease. In 1986, we made a promise to the children of the world to get rid of this menace and we can’t turn our backs on them. This task must be done, and we are very close to eradicate Polio.
This year, Rotary Club of Ann Arbor has been able to secure special funding to match your individual donations. This is in addition to the Gates Foundation match. I earnestly hope you will take advantage of this additional match.
At Club level, if your individual donation is higher than your last year’s Polio Plus donation by even a dollar, your entire donation this year will be matched 1:1 up to a cumulative amount of $10,000.
When this match is combined with Gates Foundation match, your donation is leveraged 6 times. (e.g.: $1 from you + $1 match at club level = $2 + Gates Foundation match of $4= $6 total contribution). This is an opportunity to leverage your contribution 6 times. If you want to know what your last year’s Polio Plus contribution was, please let myself or Lori Walters know. We will help you with that.
To qualify for the match, you must donate through our club and not directly on the Rotary Foundation website. You can write a check payable to Rotary Foundation (memo line should state Polio Plus) and mail it to Rotary Club of Ann Arbor, PO Box 131217, Ann Arbor, MI 48113. Alternatively, you can pay online at a2Rotary.org using the Donate button. Make sure to mark it as a Polio donation. If you are donating online and want the entire amount of donation to go for the cause, please add 3.5% to your donation. This is the fee charged for the transaction by a third party. You can also bring your check to the meeting on 23rd.
I hope you will consider donating to this worthy cause for the children of the world and help keep Rotary’s promise to eradicate Polio.
On behalf of the children around the world and those whom we lost to this dreadful disease (I personally have lost several friends in my childhood growing up in India), I thank you in advance for your incredible generosity.
“Rotary continues to be the heart and soul of Polio eradication”
– Bill Gates, Co-Chair, Gates Foundation
“Polio anywhere in the world is a risk everywhere in the world”
– Thomas Frieden, Director, CDC
