Dennis Shore
HOPE’s name is The Rotary Foundation, which is fulfilling the Rotary Mission to “Do good in the world.” You are aware of the “End Polio Now” Campaign, and you know of the “6 Areas of Focus”: Peace and conflict prevention/resolution, Disease prevention and treatment, Water and sanitation, Maternal and child health, Basic education and literacy, Economic and Community development.
In the past twelve months, The Rotary Foundation has spent US$4,000,000,000 world-wide, improving lives, concentrating on Water & Sanitation, Humanitarian Health, Fighting Disease and Scholarship programs. In particular, with the apparent re-emergence of polio, a new fight to combat vaccine derived polio as a result of using attenuated vaccines. This may take years! The Rotary Foundation continues to work with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will DOUBLE what we raise to eliminate polio. The leverage is amazing.
The Rotary Foundation is now focussing on helping children born with congenital heart defects world-wide. Through ROMAC (Rotary Oceania Medical Aid for Children), we will continue to bring children from the Pacific area to Australia for surgery.
Rotary International works through Rotary Peace Centres to Facilitate Peace & Conflict prevention/resolution. . Our Rotary District 9800 has had a Peace Fellow every year since the program began 34 years ago. We will have 3 this year. The District Global Grants Scholarship program has been very effective in providing special education opportunities overseas – this club has been actively doing that. There are District Grants for local programs which we should focus on as Rotary District will match and enable more to be achieved. They can have magical outcomes. For more details about Grants go to:
In this last year, District Grants have been predominantly used to provide clean water, to help grow local economies, to build dams for breeding fish, to develop Maternal & Child Health Programs and many more.
While Rotary members raise money and donate to another charity that comes back for more and more, your donations are more effective if you donate to Rotary International. So make it your prime donation target. There is no better charity. Let us join together to grow the reputation of Rotary. Use the money that we raise to do good in the world.
So how do we achieve magical outcomes? How do we keep doing good? Through Rotary International by club giving, personal giving, bequests and endowments. At question time, PDG Dennis was asked about becoming a “Centurion”. He will e-mail information to our Club.