Our Rotary club has selected a number of Rotary programs to support. We make annual financial contributions and promote their good work through making a donation on behalf of our guest speakers throughout the year. Some of the supported programs are:
Interplast
Interplast sends teams of volunteer plastic and reconstructive surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses and allied health professionals to provide life-changing surgery and medical training in 17 countries across the Asia Pacific region.
Their mission is to ‘repair bodies and rebuild lives’ and they do this through providing surgical services to those who could not otherwise afford or access these, and by building the capacity of local medical systems through their training and mentoring programs.
Operation Cleft
Operation Cleft, run by the Box hill Rotary Club, provides free cleft lip and palate repair surgery for underprivileged children in Bangladesh.
Operation Cleft has changed the lives of more than 10,010 children since it started in 2005. By providing these children with the opportunity to have the cleft repair surgery they need we are not just giving them a smile, we are giving them a future.
Australian Rotary Health
Australian Rotary Health provides funding into four focus areas:
- Mental Health Research
- General Health Research
- Indigenous Health Scholarships
- Rural Medical & Nursing Scholarships
End Polio Now: Make History Today
Polio eradication is Rotary’s top philanthropic goal.
Rotary’s involvement started with a successful pilot project to immunize children in the Philippines in 1979. Since 1985, polio eradication has been Rotary’s flagship project, with members donating their time and money to help immunize more than 2.5 billion children in 122 countries.
Through the ‘End Polio Now’ campaign, every dollar Rotary contributes to polio eradication (up to US$35 million/year through 2018) will be matched 2-to-1 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Rotary and its partners have reduced polio cases by 99.9% worldwide. Africa has not seen a new case of polio since August 2014. Only two countries – Pakistan and Afghanistan – have never stopped transmission of the disease.