Sponsored Crocus Walk for End Polio Now!

Event Summary

Subject to confirmation of the Gift Aid to be claimed, the event total should be £1,247.44 including Gift Aid, certainly well over £1,200, which is a fantastic effort!

Bellan (22 sponsored walkers) exceeded last year's total of £514 by over £300, a great result.  One of their pupils, Lilly Wedgwood, raised a terrific £160 (+Gift Aid).

Our Lady and St Oswald's (43 sponsored walkers) raised a fantastic total of £418 (incl Gift Aid).  One of their pupils, Tessa Evans, raised an amazing £92 (+Gift Aid)!

Prepcare Nursery walked again this year to support the event.

David Gordon of Oswestry Rotary Club, said, “The event as a whole raised over £1,200 for Rotary's End Polio Now appeal and I will be sending a cheque to Rotary Foundation later this month when we know the exact total including Gift Aid.  Our thanks go to all the pupils who helped to make this year’s event so successful”.

---

On Friday 26th February 2016 around 100 pupils from three Oswestry primary schools will walk around Cae Glas Park to raise funds for Rotary's End Polio Now campaign.

Polio is a serious viral infection and, alhough many people with polio will have no symptoms and won't know they're infected, for some the polio virus causes temporary or permanent paralysis, or even death.

But, you haven't heard of anybody catching polio?

Cases of polio in the UK fell dramatically when routine vaccination was introduced in the mid-1950s and, for those of us born after the 1960s, routine childhood immunisation has made the spectre of hospital wards of rows of 'iron lung' machines keeping polio patients alive a distant 'black and white' memory.

In 1985, when the annual number of cases was 350,000 worldwide, Rotary started its campaign to eradicate polio.  Together with the World Health Organisation, and with the recent support of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, through funding the supply of vaccine and providing volunteer vaccination workers to travel to remote villages where the virus still threatens, the worldwide total for 2015 fell to 101 cases. Yes - only 101!

Although there hasn't been a case of polio caught in the UK since 1984, the virus is still found in other parts of the world.  Polio is still endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

So, why is this important to us in the UK?  

Whilst the virus still exists in the world, there remains a very small risk that it could be brought back to the UK and the campaign must, therefore, continue.

Since 2010, when pupils from many primary schools around Oswestry planted 5,000 crocus bulbs in Cae Glas Park to mark Rotary's latest stage of the End Polio Now campaign, pupils from Oswestry School Bellan House have completed 4 sponsored walks in the park to raise funds - a tremendous sum of over £4,000 in fact.  This year they will be joined by pupils from Our Lady and St Oswald's Catholic Primary School, Oswestry and Whittington Primary School's new Rotakids group who will be supporting the cause.

Oswestry's Town Mayor Cllr Peter Cherrington will be watching them set off at 11.00am to the sound of the bugle played by Rotarian Stuart Phillips.  Let's hope for good weather!