Sunrise Bulletin Vol 34 Issue 14 (Sep 30, 2019)

Mark Daniel Maloney

President 2019-20

Rotary's long-term, sustained battle against polio has defined our organization for decades. We have a right to be proud of all that we have accomplished through the years.

Our progress is real and noteworthy. In 1988, polio was endemic in 125 countries, with more than 350,000 new cases a year worldwide. Since then, Rotary and our Global Polio Eradication Initiative partners have reduced the incidence of polio by more than 99.9 percent, vaccinated more than 2.5 billion children against the virus, and prevented 18 million cases of paralysis. Over the years, Rotary has helped country after country move into the polio-free column. This includes India, which some considered impossible not long ago. Of the three types of poliovirus, type 2 has been eradicated and type 3 could soon be certified as eradicated. Nigeria has not reported a case of wild poliovirus in nearly three years. If this trend holds, we will be down to just one type of wild poliovirus in only one section of the world, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There are major challenges in that region. But it is crucial that we remain optimistic. Look at all that we have accomplished so far. This is no time to get discouraged or to think that the task is impossible. We will end polio forever, but only if we remain steadfast and vigilant. World Polio Day is a time for Rotarians from all over the globe to come together, recognize the progress we have made in our fight against polio, and plan the action we must take to end polio forever. The key word is action, because we still have important work to do.

This year, we want to see as many Rotary clubs as possible holding World Polio Day events around the world. Need some ideas? How about organizing a viewing party for friends and club members to watch Rotary's Online Global Update? You could also dedicate a club meeting to World Polio Day or create a fundraising event. Remember, every dollar raised is matched 2-to-1 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Once you have created an event, register it at endpolio.org/register-your-event. Then promote it using the World Polio Day toolkit, available at endpolio.org/world-polio-day.

Mark your calendar to tune in to Rotary's World Polio Day Online Global Update on 24 October. This year we will stream our program on Facebook in multiple time zones around the world. Visit the Rotary International Facebook page to RSVP to your region's program. And do not forget to follow the event on social media and share it with your network.

When we reach our goal, polio will become only the second human disease eradicated on the planet, and Rotary will receive international acclaim. But what matters most is the children who will never again have to face this terrible, disabling virus. Rotary must continue to connect the world in the effort toward polio eradication. It is up to us. Let us finish the job.

Club members (from left) Anne Peach, Jeff Smith, Augustine Campana, Greg Gorski, and Cornelia Jung.

Image credit: Gregg McGough

A family trip to Walt Disney World may be perfectly magical, but at some point you’ll be ready to take off the Mickey Mouse ears and hang out with your Rotary family for an hour. You won’t have to go far: The Rotary Club of Lake Buena Vista, the only service club that meets on Disney property, has been welcoming visiting Rotarians for decades.

In the entryway to the club’s meeting room at the Wyndham hotel in the Disney Springs entertainment complex, a world map is covered with pins marking the hometowns of visitors from the United States and Canada, as well as countries including Denmark, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria, Paraguay, South Africa, and Ukraine. “We’re the make-up Rotary club for the rest of the world,” says Augustine Campana, club president and a writer who has researched the club’s history. In a Rotary version of “It’s a Small World,” a slideshow near the podium rotates through the banners in the club’s collection.

Rotarians can serve themselves waffles in the shape of the iconic mouse ears and get a selfie with Pluto or Minnie Mouse — the hotel’s restaurant hosts a “character breakfast” at the same time as the Rotary meeting — before they head in. “My grandkids beg to come to the Rotary meeting for breakfast,” says Anne Peach, a health care consultant.

The hospitable atmosphere is what drew Cornelia Jung, senior director of events for Hyatt Regency Orlando, to the club. “You walk in and you feel a vibe,” says Jung. “I love the openness, the warmness, and the dedication to giving back at this club.”

The club was chartered in February 1972, just four months after Walt Disney World Resort opened. (Walt Disney, who died in 1966, was an honorary member of the Rotary Club of Palm Springs, California.) At the time, the club met at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort, one of the two original Disney hotels located right outside the Magic Kingdom. “You could look out the window and see the [Cinderella] castle,” Campana says. Many of the club’s 15 charter members were involved with Disney World in some way, including Garth Walker, a consultant who helped set up the resort’s employee medical plans and who is still a member of the club.

Several club members — including Campana and his wife, Jean — moved here just to be close to Disney World. He says that after a belated honeymoon trip to the resort in 1989, “we said, ‘Wow, we should live here.’ We even considered being cast members,” as employees of Disney are known.

Other club members are involved with the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the political jurisdiction outside Orlando that encompasses the 25,000-acre Disney property and is responsible for things such as building codes, sewer and water infrastructure, and fire protection. The two Disney-run cities in the district, Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, have full-time populations of 47 and 10, respectively. All that means that the service aspect of the Rotary Club of Lake Buena Vista is a little different from that of most other clubs.

“My grandkids beg to come to the Rotary meeting for breakfast.”

“We’re not part of a community. That’s unusual,” says Greg Gorski, who joined after moving to Florida in 2014. “When I lived in New Hampshire, I owned a grocery store; it was easy to know where the need was. Here, there’s no school or local food bank or those kinds of things you’d typically reach out to in a Rotary club.”

The club’s service activities include financially supporting and volunteering with the WOW Legacy Group, a nonprofit that was founded by Lake Buena Vista Rotarian Secily Wilson to help women who have fallen on hard times get back on their feet. The club also is sponsoring TShane Johnson, a Lake Buena Vista Rotarian who is hiking across the United States to raise money for the Gary Sinise Foundation, which builds smart homes for wounded soldiers.

The club’s location also influences its programs for young people, says Jeff Smith, a semiretired Disney employee (“I visited Disneyland when I was nine and I decided then that’s what I wanted to do when I grew up,” he says) who is the club’s New Generations chair. Because the Disney property has no schools, there’s no obvious place to start an Interact or Rotaract club. But the club supports young people in other ways, including by sponsoring students to attend Rotary Youth Leadership Awards events every year, sponsoring and supporting both outbound and inbound Rotary Youth Exchange students, and awarding scholarships to local high school students. Club members also teach classes and mentor students at RYLA events.

After a recitation of The Four-Way Test — with a Disney-appropriate fifth question, “Is it fun?” — meetings adjourn at 8:30 a.m. You’ll be back at your hotel before your family is even out of their pajamas.

— DIANA SCHOBERG

• This story originally appeared in the October 2019 issue of The Rotarian magazine.