President Eve’s New Rotary Year Message

Welcome to the new Rotary year and what an exciting year we have ahead. It’s a historic year as it is the year that we shall be celebrating the Centenary of Our Rotary Foundation.

This is a unique opportunity for us to go out there and raise our profile as we mark one hundred years of our Rotary charity “doing good in the world”, from funding global scholars and peace fellows to carrying out our countless humanitarian projects around the world to ridding the world of polio.

And it is thanks to The Rotary Foundation that my journey in Rotary started as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar studying for a Master of Science Degree in Broadcast Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and Evanston is, of course, the home of Rotary International.

I never dreamt that I would one day become President of Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland and I am so honoured that you elected me to this role and look forward to sharing this special year with you all.

We are also on the brink of another historic milestone. We are now so close to achieving Rotary’s number one goal of a polio-free world.

So far this year, just 18 cases of polio have been reported in the two remaining countries where polio is still endemic, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

This month, we hope to celebrate Nigeria being free of polio for two years and in August the whole of Africa. We need three years of no new cases to certify the world polio-free and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative says that could be achieved in 2019.

We have reached this milestone thanks to the dedication and determination of Rotarians with our campaign started in 1985 to eradicate polio. But to End Polio Now and forever, we have to keep up the fight and finish the job.