Rotary club plans variety of awareness and fundraising activities to eradicate polio

What do Italy's Trevi Fountain, India's Charminar monument, and the New York Stock Exchange building have in common?

Each of these iconic landmarks will provide a dramatic backdrop for an equally dramatic message: End Polio Now. Those three words – representing Rotary's pledge to rid the world of this crippling childhood disease -- will be projected onto each structure during the week surrounding Feb. 23, the humanitarian service organization's 106th anniversary.

These monuments join the other iconic landmarks that have carried the pledge in recent years: the Sydney Opera House, London's Tower Bridge, the Roman Coliseum, Egypt's Pyramid of Khafre, Chicago's Wrigley Building, the Obelisk in Argentina, and the San Francisco Ferry Building.

"These global illuminations carry Rotary's pledge to end polio—saying to the world that we will fight this crippling disease to the end," says Carl-Wilhelm Stenhammar, chair of The Rotary Foundation, which oversees Rotary's polio eradication program. "It is our hope that people worldwide will see this visible pledge and join Rotary and its partners in this historic effort to rid the world of polio forever."

The End Polio Now illumination in India is particularly symbolic because 2011 is expected to be a key year in the fight to stop the disease in that country—one of only four nations where transmission of the wild poliovirus has never been stopped.  Last year, India experienced a record low number of polio cases—reporting just 42. The other remaining polio-endemic countries are Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.

Along with India's Charminar in the city of Hyderabad, other sites scheduled for illumination the week of Feb. 23 include the KPT Government Building in Karachi, Pakistan; Kanazawa Castle, in Kanazawa, Japan; Taipei 101 Building, Taiwan; the Trevi Fountain in Rome, Italy; Fort San Cristobel in San Juan, Puerto Rico; the New York Stock Exchange Building in New York City, USA; Byblos Castle in Byblos, Lebanon; and the Dutch Parliament Building in The Hague, The Netherlands.

In addition to the landmark light displays, the general public can join global celebrities online including Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu, violinist Itzhak Perlman, Queen Noor of Jordan, actor Jackie Chan, Grammy Award-winning singers Angelique Kidjo and Ziggy Marley, golfer Jack Nicklaus, and environmentalist Dr. Jane Goodall as part of Rotary's "This Close" advertising campaign at thisclose.net.

The centerpiece of the campaign is the tagline: "We're this close to ending polio", and supporters of a polio-free world can add their portrait photograph to an online template featuring the signature "This Close" gesture with their thumb and forefinger.

Rotary clubs worldwide have planned a variety of awareness and fundraising activities surrounding Feb. 23, including:

• Ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange with vaccine manufacturer Sanofi Pasteur on Feb. 23, and the opening bells at markets in Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and Lisbon that same day.
• Soliciting donations beginning Feb. 23, at events across the United Kingdom.  Schools are holding "Wear it Purple" days during which children will exchange their uniforms for purple clothing.  The color symbolizes the purple dye that Rotary volunteers and health workers in developing countries use to mark the pinky finger of a child who has received the oral polio vaccine.
• Keeping with the purple theme, thousands of purple crocus flowers were planted in public spaces in October as part of the campaign in the United Kingdom, and should start to bloom by late February.