As Rotary Year 2017-2018 draws to a close, it is time to summarize our activities and achievements and to develop goals for 2018-2019. A huge thanks to Mary Jean Ewing and her leadership over the last three years and her willingness to complete projects that were started before I, Marny Eulberg, assumed leadership of the committee in January 2018. It has been said that one is not an “empty-nester” until all of the kids’ stuff is out of the basement and attic; well, Mary Jean must be nearly a “polio empty nester” after she gave 3 more boxes of polio stuff to me at the District Celebration!
This has been a very successful fundraising year for our District toward the effort to eradicate polio. To date, District 5450 clubs have donated $221,541 for Polio Plus! We are extremely grateful to Denver 31 and their amazing success in raising funds for Ending Polio in honor of Grant Wilkins.
Our District polio committee set an aspirational goal of each club contributing to Polio Plus an amount equal to $50 per member this year and, so far, 25 clubs have met or exceeded that goal! They are Arvada, Aurora, Aurora Fitzsimons, Boulder Flatirons, Broomfield Crossing, Brush, Carbon Valley, Castle Pines, Commerce City, Denver, Denver Mile High, Denver Southeast, eClub One, Englewood, Five Points Cultural District, Golden, Granby, Grand Lake, Lakewood, Lakewood Foothills, Mead, South Jeffco, Summit County, University Hills, and Wheat Ridge. We are aware that some club treasurers wait until June to make the donations to the Rotary Foundation so we might end the year with close to one quarter million dollars donated to Polio Plus from our District.
A special thanks to the polio committee members: Jeanne Canny (Mountain Foothills), Mary Jean Ewing (Boulder Flatirons), Lynn Perez-Hewitt (Littleton), Peg Johnston (Denver), Pam Lacy (South Jeffco), Audrey Leavitt (Denver Mile High), Gail Lehrmann (Parker), Mike Oldham (Parker), Don Shattuck (Centennial), David Talbot (Mountain Foothills), Carl Tintsman (Boulder), Peter Van Arsdale (Denver Southeast), and Darlee Whiting (Littleton).