In 2012, the Rotary Club of Great Britain designed a Purple Crocus Campaign where they design and sell fabric lapel crocus pins throughout the world to raise money to support Rotary International’s project to eradicate polio. Polio is an incurable but vaccine-preventable paralyzing and potentially fatal disease that continues to threaten children in some parts of the world.
Why the purple crocus? It’s symbolic of the purple dye used by aid workers who vaccinate children to indicate that the child has received the vaccine.
What did they learn? That the community is not only willing, but also eager, to contribute to eradication efforts of a wild virus that when it enters the nervous system, can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours and strike people of any age.
Today, the Rotary Club of Gloucester Point, Virginia has partnered with Brent and Becky’s Bulbs to sell crocus’ again…only with a twist. And a lot more selection.
25% of all purchases made with Brent and Becky’s Bulbs online or at the gardens and bulb shop, and designated for the Gloucester Point Rotary Charitable Foundation, will be donated to END POLIO now.
Plant plants. End polio. It’s that simple.
Your support, your purchase, provides funding for vaccines, operational support, medical personnel, lab equipment and educational materials for health workers and parents.
$15 = 100 doses of polio vaccine. Sixty cents will protect a child for life. $350 = 350 vaccine carriers to keep the vaccines cool to remain effective.
Every dollar committed by Rotary to end polio will be matched two-to-one by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation up to $35 million a year through 2018.
Less than 400 cases were confirmed around the world in 2014, thanks to the efforts of Rotary. That’s down from 1,000 cases per day in the 1980s. Two countries have never stopped the transmission of the wild poliovirus: Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Polio cases remaining today are the most difficult to prevent due to geographical isolation, conflict and cultural barriers.
Until all polio cases are eradicated, every country in the world remains at risk of an outbreak.
