Rotary Foundation Contribution Form - Rotary International: Fill & Download for Free

This is a really good question, and you might also wonder which Nobel Prize it would be - physiology/medicine, or peace? The 1954 physiology/medicine prize went to Enders, Weller and Robbins for successfully culturing poliovirus in the lab - but it wasn’t because it was poliovirus, but because they had shown that viruses in general might be cultured in the lab! And a virologist on the Nobel committee put the kibosh on nominations of Salk, Sabin, etc. in the ensuing years - even refusing to be nominated himself - because he felt the progress being made in the area of polio vaccines just wasn’t important enough. Sigh.So… let’s say it’s the Peace Prize. Eradicating polio on a global scale qualifies, I’m sure. And of course, the Peace Prize can go - and has gone, many times - to organizations, not just individuals. So, who are the main groups working on this? There were national eradication efforts as far back as the 1960s, but the global effort really began in 1985 when Rotary International (which has local chapters of civic and business leaders all over the world) pledged to raise $120,000,000 for a global eradication effort. In 1988, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Rotary and the US Centers for Disease Control launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, formed in 2000, also joined the GPEI, contributing tens of millions.The Peace Prize can be split between as many as three winners - this has happened in 1994 and 2011. Organizational winners have always been international and/or non-governmental organizations, never divisions of national governments. So I would say the prize goes to:Rotary International - unless the huge number of Google hits for Rotary members lobbying for a Peace Prize irritates the committee!The World Health Organization, andUNICEF.WHO and UNICEF are both UN bodies; UNICEF won a Peace Prize back in the 1960s for its work in getting countries worldwide to recognize and work on children’s issues. Several UN bodies have won the Peace Prize over the years, but WHO hasn’t yet.The Gates Foundation likely misses out in part on the prize for Polio eradication due to not existing at the time the effort first started, but also because to date, there’s no precedent for giving the Peace Prize to a charitable foundation for funding efforts. That being said, if the Gates Foundation’s funding of efforts against Malaria pays off, there will have to be serious discussion about whether to award the physiology/medicine prize to the researchers who are ultimately successful, or the Peace Prize to someone-or-other, or maybe both.

My answer is taken from various fact sheets on this subject. I have been a member of Rotary for over 20 years.Rotary undertook this campaign in 1979 beginning in the Philippines and followed by Cambodia, Haiti, Morocco, Paraguay and Sierra Leone.In 1985, Rotary launched its Polio Plus program, the first initiative to tackle global polio eradication through the mass vaccination of children. Rotary has contributed more than $1.7 billion dollars and countless volunteer hours to help eradicate polio.In 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiatve was formed. It is a public/private partnership that includes Rotary, the a World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and governments of the world.Rotary’s focus is advocacy, fundraising, volunteer recruitment and awareness- building. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Honored Rotary with its Gates Award for Global Health and contributed $1 million. In 2011, Bill Gates spoke at the Rotary International Convention in New Orleans. Since then the foundation has continued contributions by challenging Rotarians and matching funds raised by Rotarians.Please visit Home | Rotary International for more information under Our Causes.

I think it is important to add to this post that Rotary International is an international service organization whose stated purpose is to bring together business and professional leaders in order to provide humanitarian services, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and to advance goodwill and peace around the world. Rotary has 1.22 million members worldwide. .Through Rotary clubs, people from all continents and cultures come together to exchange ideas, and form friendships and professional connections while making a difference in their backyards and around the world. Each day, members pour their passion, integrity, and intelligence into completing projects that have a lasting impact. They persevere until they deliver real, lasting solutions. For more than 110 years, they’ve bridged cultures and connected continents to champion peace, fight illiteracy and poverty, promote clean water and sanitation, and fight disease all over the world. Rotary has over 1.2 Million members and 35,000+ clubs all over the world. The most notable current global project, PolioPlus, is contributing to the global eradication of polio. Rotary has also teamed up with the Bill and Linda Gates Foundation. Rotary, along with their partners, WHO, CDC, and UNICEF (to name a few) has reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent worldwide. Rotarians have helped immunize more than 2.5 billion children against polio in 122 countries.For more http://www.rotaryinternatioal.com or Rotary International - Wikipedia and Meet our polio partners