RI President John Germ, early in his term, wished to make a special push on the End Polio Now effort in the Rotary Foundation’s Centenary year. He was conscious of the huge amount of District Designated Fund money lying unused in many districts of the world, so exhorted Governors around the world to make a special donation to the Polio Plus campaign from their DDF.  He promise to honour the top 5 districts giving from their DDF at the International Convention in Atlanta in June 2017.

 

District Governor Bruce Lakin asked the Foundation committee to consider making a donation in this way.  We hadn’t done this in the past conserving our District Designated Fund for humanitarian and educational projects.  However we had accumulated sufficient to believe that in this Centenary year we could make a donation of up to USD $50,000.  Grants Chair, David Dean suggested asking the clubs to match a DDF donation  and we worked out that in doing so their donation to Polio would be multiplied by a factor of 7.5 thanks to a 50% subsidy of DDF money by the Foundation’s World Fund, and then the 2 to 1 match from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation   If we had just provided DDF, then that money would have gone from our ability to use it with no recognition anywhere in the system. However, with club involvement it would serve to really focus our District Clubs’ attention on how close we are to eradicating polio and how important it is to still work hard collectively to fund the program.

 

So, as already reported, we were astounded and delighted when 43 of our 72 clubs met the challenge of donating USD $2650 (John Germ’s challenge)  or AUD $3577 to Polio Plus.  This meant over USD $114,000 from clubs was matched by this amount from our DDF, providing USD $854,000 (or AUD $1.15M) to the battle against Polio.  We were delighted to hear during May that as the third largest contributing district from DDF in the world that we would be called to the stage in Atlanta to receive recognition.  PDG Bob Aitken, our district Polio co-Chair was at the Convention and delightedly received the certificate on behalf of District Governor Bruce Lakin.

 

Well done and congratulations to all those clubs that were able to make this special effort by March of 2017.