October 23, 2017 (Oct 22, 2017)

OCTOBER 18, 2017 AT ROTARY

Posted on Oct 22, 2017

Stan Carignan offered the prayer while Hal Leland led us in song. Guests included the sister of our speaker, Katie Meinhover, Kaley Sievert from The Daily Journal, and Ann Lundeen, Buzz's wife.

During our brag segment, Mary Pettit spoke about the upcoming Dance and Dessert performances by the Fergus Falls School of Dance on December 2 and 3. President Steve Leitte commended Stan Carignan and Habitat for Humanity, while Stan offered a report on recent doings by Habitat. Keith Olson reported on his wife retiring after 30 years and a successful goose hunt to Saskatchewan, although they missed Rod Ebersviller on the trip. Katie Johnson thanked John MacFarlane for all the benches and shelves for the greenhouse at the Community Garden and Dan Jonson for the hand sanitizer. Mike Smith paid for being late and leaving early.

Laurie Larson talked about the Four Way Test and we also heard about the upcoming Salvation Army bell ringing. Lois Josefson had rose tickets for distribution and also reported on he Rotary Oration Contest the last Saturday this coming January.

Buzz Lundeen introduced our speaker, Ted Meinhover, a graduate of Perham High School who attended the Rotary Youth Leadership Award (RYLA) Camp in Crookston while there. He first started studying Chinese at the Concordia Language Villages around 1996. He received a scholarship from Rotary to attend the University of Minnesota and then was offered a job with the United States Foreign Service. He has been located in Beijing for four years, in the Political Affairs office. The embassy has 400 Americans working at it, making it one of the four largest U.S. embassies in the world. Ted said that under current leader Xi Jinping, China seems to be undermining free market reforms that have taken place since Mao Zedong, manipulating what businesses succeed and shrinking the space for a civil society to what he described as "almost non-existent." There was time for a few questions after the presentation and the speaker complimented the club on the quality of those asked.

Ted's remarks were also reported in a front page story in the October 20th edition of The Daily Journal.

IS THE POLIO ERADICATION CAMPAIGN WORTH IT?

In rough numbers, the polio eradication effort since 1985 has cost about $12 billion, of which Rotary has contributed $1.5 billion. It is estimated to fully eradicate the disease, it will cost about another $1.5 billion, of which $1.2 billion has already been pledged. An economic analysis by infectious-disease experts estimated that by preventing some 8 million cases of polio paralysis from 1985 to 2035, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative will create net gains of $40 to $50 billion, mostly in developing countries. By analogy, eradicating polio in the U.S. is estimated to have saved some $220 billion since 1955.

October 24 is World Polio Day! A lot of you may be at the Chamber's Annual Taste of Fergus Falls this Tuesday evening, but if not you can watch a live stream event from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters in Seattle, Washington, starting at 4:30 p.m. our time, by going to endpolio.org. This event is being sponsored by Rotary and the Gates Foundation. World health officials and celebrities will talk about the progress made to date in eradicating polio, what more needs to be done, how much it will cost and encourage your support of the world-changing objective to end polio. The event will also be re-streamed subsequent to the live showing at the same site.