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The members of Fergus-Elora organized a wonderful End Polio Now campaign for Oct 21st. 2021 raising $3100 to eliminate Polio.
Our key strategy was Pies for Polio-we partnered with Fergie's bakery in Fergus---every meat pie purchased during the End Polio week (inhouse or online) was calculated and a donation of over $1000 will be made towards our END POLIO CAMPAIGN. What was fascinating part of our story is the owner of Fergie's Bakery -her father was on the initial health team that discovered the polio liquid vaccine and he was a Rotarian.
Our Rotarians also developed Pints for Polio-we partnered with the Elora Brewing Company in Elora and set out Friday Oct 22nd as a day that pints purchased that day in house at the brewery would be calculated and a donation of $250 would be made to the End Polio Now Program. We also had a club social lunch meeting that day were we enjoyed fellowship and had a few pints that day with our lunch—great fun for approximately 18 Rotarians and guests.
In addition for the first time in Fergus-Elora club history arranged a END POLIO FLAG RAISING in downtown Elora. Our club purchased the END NOW POLIO FLAG and raised it at our community flag pole on Friday Oct 22nd. We asked that the CW Rotary club join us for this first time ceremony and they had many members attend. Both club Presidents spoke (Rob and Rick) at this historic event. It created awareness for the END POLIO NOW campaign and the flag waved for 10 days.
Our final strategy was to have our first ever Fergus-Elora Presidents challenge for END POLIO NOW...... we purchased a number of END POLIO NOW shirts, hats, socks (from CSR marketing) and auctioned them off to our members. The Rotarians were asked to individually contribute the END POLIO NOW with a minimum contribution of $25 -----it was fun as rotarians and guests joined in the challenge------the result was close to $1800 raised to end polio and a club members contribution rate of over 75 percent of people who attended that club meeting contributed.
So $3100 raised – averaged $100 per club member -----Wonderful for our RI foundation (End Polio program) with many new contributors for the first time to END POLIO NOW.
Submitted by Rob Galloway
Rotary Club of Fergus-Elora