Wickford Goes Planting!

Wickford Rotary have sponsored a mass planting in Wickford of purple crocuses to highlight the work done over more than 30 years by Rotary International in fighting to eradicate polio in the world.

The purple crocus is a symbol of Rotary’s worldwide campaign to eradicate polio, with its colour representing the purple dye used to mark the finger of a child who has been immunised to distinguish them from those who haven’t.

This year Wickford Rotary engaged with the junior schools in Wickford to plant crocuses in the grounds of their schools, sold crocuses on the High Street and at its monthly Quiz night to get them planted in private gardens, and recently planted 20 crocus corms at each of the 56 memorials on the main path through Wickford’s Memorial Park.

Their efforts raised £150 for the Rotary Foundation, Rotary’s own charity, which has been sponsoring efforts to eradicate polio from the world since 1985. Cases die to wild poliovirus have decreased by over 99% since 1988, from an estimated 350 000 cases then, to 22 reported cases in 2017. As a result of the global effort to eradicate the disease, more than 16 million people have been saved from paralysis. To finish the job over 2 billion doses of oral polio vaccine have to be administered each and every year in over 60 countries until the world is finally certified polio free