District Governor addresses Rotary
Vida, who governs district 5550 which covers northwestern Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, got a chance to meet with Rotary International President Kalyan Banerjee at a district governor's training session in San Diego recently. At the training session Banerjee unveiled his theme for the 2011-2012 year, which is 'to reach within to embrace humanity'.
Banerjee focused on three main areas for Rotarians to focus on over the next year: families, which should all have the same access to basic human rights like water, food, shelter, and medication no matter where they are located; continuity, for Rotarians to keep doing the things their community has come to depend on them for, and taking those things up a notch; and change, for Rotarians to recognize what they need to change and having the courage to do something about it.
Vida herself has identified three goals for Rotarians at the district level: to increase membership; to support the Rotary Foundation and the good work it does; and to use public relations to get the word out about the projects they are doing.
Vida also brought the club up to speed on some of the good work being dune by the Rotary Foundation internationally, specifically, the Polio Plus program which received support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Polio Plus program has been working hard to eradicate polio around the world and is still working with a number of third world countries including Pakistan, Nigeria, India, and Afghanistan.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $255 million to the cause if Rotarians could raise $200 million by June 30, 2012, and according to Vida they are on their way.
"The Gates Foundation already deposited the money into the Rotary bank accounts so they have every confidence that Rotarians are going to be able to rise to the challenge and I'm happy to say that as of August we are at $189 million of the required $200 million," said Vida.
Once country that is showing change thanks to Rotary is India, which has not seen a case of polio reported since January of 2011. It will take three years before they can declare themselves polio free.
"We are now at 50 per cent of the number of cases this year versus last year, year over year so that's a tremendous achievement. For a country of that size they have really worked very, very hard to make sure we get the vaccinations to all of the kids that need it and now not to have a new case in almost nine months is absolutely tremendous," said Vida.
Vida also informed the club that the week of Oct. 24 is a chance for club to talk with the community about polio. We haven't had a case of polio in decades in North America but there are still people that are choosing not to vaccinate their children against polio, and that's a risk we can't take.
Story courtesy Robin Dudgeon and the Portage Daily Graphic