Howard Briggs - LEIGH-ON-SEA ROTARY CLUB The Conservative candidate for Blenheim Park Ward, Southend-on-Sea, May 2010
Site Plan  Home      Résumé     Personal     Political     Professional     Family   Interests     Rotary     Choirs     Singing     Rugby     Westcliff HS  Southend Fund     Awards  Articles     Article 1     Article 2     Article 3     Article 4     Article 5     Article 6  Contacts	Service Above Self Coming from a local politician the above motto sounds pretentious but is actually a symbol of what Rotary International does round the world every day of the year through its own charity, the Rotary Foundation. It is this aspect that has been my main interest within Rotary. Until Bill Gates set up his own foundation a few years ago it was the largest trust fund in the world and had been built up over many years by thousands of Rotarians from all parts of the globe. Polio was at one time a scourge in every country in the world but we now hear very little of it because the World Health Organisation was known to have implemented a preventive programme in all third world countries. They were able to do this because Rotary International found the money to implement the programme. Because it has been almost eliminated, interest in making it non-existent has waned and in four countries of the world it was not abolished and is on the rise again and will eventually become a pandemic as it was before unless something is done. Rotary has pledged to find $150 million and The Bill Gates Foundation has pledged $300 million and hopefully there will be no more such suffering in the future as there was in the past. My other Rotary interest is the Rotary Eye Hospital in Vuyyuru, India, a small town in Andrha Pradesh. This was started by a local former headmaster of West Leigh Primary School, the late Frank Keevil when I was President of the Leigh-on-Sea Rotary Club. I have visited it three times and continue to help with fund raising. The hospital has, since its foundation in the 1980s, saved tens of thousands of people from blindness in this poor rural area. Rotary is not just about having lunch with friends every week, important as that is, but it is good to enjoy the company of like minded people in any walk of life.
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