Rotary Foundation

The mission of The Rotary Foundation is to enable Rotarians to advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through the improvement of health, the support of education, and the alleviation of poverty.
The Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation supported solely by voluntary contributions from Rotarians and friends of the Foundation who share its vision of a better world.

One of the most important aspects of the work of Foundation is the eradication of polio across the world. This project was started solely by Rotary in the early 1980's but has grown enormously since then. In particular, donations of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, providing Rotary itself raises like for like funds itself have made a significant impact. This is a very big task but one which Rotarians all over the world are up to and dealing with right now.  All the money raised will directly support immunisation campaigns in a few developing countries, where polio continues to infect and paralyse children, robbing them of their futures and compounding the hardships faced by their families. 

A telling testimony to the success of the Rotary campaign to eradicate polio was when members of Pinner Rotary club attended an all day presentation at a local school, and discovered that most of the children there had never heard of it.