Once again this year, from Jan, 1 - March 31, our club is saying to our members, "Let's Make a Deal."  We will meet you half-way to make you a Paul Harris Fellow, or to lift you to the next Paul Harris Fellow-Plus level of giving to The Rotary Foundation's Annual Fund - SHARE.  This is a limited-time offer, is only available through the Prescott-Sunup Rotary Club, and it is only available to our club's members.

 

At our meeting on Wednesday, PDG Art Harrington explained how this unique program works, why it is so important to our club, and why contributing to The Rotary Foundation makes so much sense.  It is indeed "the enabling arm of Rotary," and the means our club uses to exponentually leverage our international service funds, to be able to do so much good around the world.

 

 

Since 1985 Rotary's PolioPlus Polio Eradication Initiative has become a part of the DNA of Rotary.  We promised the children of the world that one day they would have a Polio-free world, in which none of them would ever again be crippled or killed by this insidious disease.  Back then, we had a world-wide epidemic, with 1,000 new cases every day.  Everyone told us that we were out-of-our-minds, and that this would be impossible.  Rotary, however, has never been daunted by what others believe to be impossible.  It has taken a long time, with Rotarians investing more than $1 billion out of their own pockets, not counting all that the governments of the world and others have given — but we are almost there.  Only two endemic countries remain.  Last year in 2025, we had only 9 cases of the wild polio virus in Afghanistan, and just 30 cases in Pakistan (down from 74 cases in 2024).  However, until we have no more cases anywhere, we must continue with national immunization days in countries around the world, protecting the newborn children from the disease, which could spread unbelievably quickly, until it has been totally eradicated.  And that is expensive!

 

International leaders, philanthropists, and global health partners announced pledges totaling US$ 1.9 billion to advance polio eradication at an event held recently in AbuDhabi, United Arab Emirates.  This funding will help vaccinate 370 million children against polio each year, while strengthening health systems in affected countries to protect children from other preventable diseases, too.

 

 

 

 

We celebrated Co-President Laura Vanderberg's birthday at our meeting last Wednesday, serenading her with the traditional Happy Birthday song.  It was also a send-off for her for her annual ski vacation.

 

 

 

Our club meeting this week will be our first monthly Sunup Time Meeting.  Led by Marsha Teller, our club's Community Service Director, these monthly meetings are intended to be a sort of "grass-roots" planning of what our club wants to be doing with primarily "hands-on" community service projects.  The goal is to get more direct input from our club members about the recognized needs within our community that they want to help us address, as a club.

 

Come and join us, as we try somethiung new and different in this brand new year.

 

 

 

Senior High RYLA begins this Friday at Camp Pinerock, here in Prescott.  After being shut down for two years during COVID, when groups were not permitted to meet, our own  A.J. Sheridan has done a stellar job, during his 3-year tenure as the RYLA Chair, of rebuilding this leadership training program to its pre-pandemic level of success.  For a program that relies on year-to-year momentum, A.J. and his leadership team literally had to start again from scratch.  This year's RYLA has actually had to create a waiting list for the 140 RYLA delegate positions.

 

 

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