Sunrise Rotary Club of Plattsburgh members are purchasing boxes of End Polio Now Tulips to raise funds for Polio Plus, a fund supporting the world-wide effort to eradicate Polio across the globe. The fundraising project is new to Rotary clubs in the Northern New York portion of Rotary District 7040. Canadian Rotary clubs in District 7040 have been taking part in the fundraising project for a few years but they import the tulip bulbs through a Canadian horticulturalist who is prohibited from shipping bulbs across the border.
Sunrise Rotary Club members as well as the public can order boxes of End Polio Now Tulips online until April 15 through THIS LINK. The tulips will be delivered to the Sunrise Rotary Club in mid- to late-September, in time for fall planting.
The End Polio Now Tulip was developed by a group of Rotarians in Holland to commemorate the organization's efforts to eradicate the disease world-wide and to raise funds for the on-going inoculation program.Rotary has been working to eradicate polio for more than 35 years. Their goal of ridding the world of this disease is closer than ever.
As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Rotary has reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent since it's first project to vaccinate children in the Philippines in 1979.
Rotary members have contributed more than $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to protect nearly 3 billion children in 122 countries from this paralyzing disease. Rotary’s advocacy efforts have played a role in decisions by governments to contribute more than $10 billion to the effort.
Today, polio remains endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it’s crucial to continue working to keep other countries polio-free. If all eradication efforts stopped today, within 10 years, polio could paralyze as many as 200,000 children each year.