Rotary International and Albany's Rotary Club - "This Close" to polio eradication

A friend considering Albany Rotary Club membership asked recently, "What does Rotary do?" 

Locally, the Albany Rotary Club http://www.albanycarotary.org/ is a service organization with weekly lunch meetings, and comraderie, networking, local service projects, and interesting talks each week.  We meet Tuesdays at Solano Grill at 12:30. 

Worldwide, Rotary International is a non-profit force behind many humanitarian projects, most notably polio eradication. RI undertook polio eradication in the 80's when polio was endemic in third world countries, thinking polio would be gone in a few years.  RI has spent hundreds of millions of dollars; there were 220 cases world-wide last year.

People younger than 65 have no idea what it was like before vaccines.  Parents panicked at the thought of summer, and whenever polio was reported in their community.   Children were kept away from group activities and swimming pools.  Most kids had at least one classmate with a withered, useless arm or leg.  One of my earliest recollections is of my mother crying with relief in 1955 at the news of polio vaccines.  

The photos and stories at this link illustrate the tenacity of the polio virus, and of those trying to eradicate it: http://www.endpolio.org/

Please consider joining Rotary in all it does.  Click here for more information http://www.albanycarotary.org/our-club/joining-our-club