President-Elect Francis, Lina Souki-Schmidt and Christopher Paris from the Rotary Club of Sydney discuss the project, "Give Every Child A Future." The Rotary Club of Sydney is planning to raise funds for the project in celebration of the Rotary Centenary this year.
Rotary Give Every Child A Future is the one project that involves all of Australasia and demonstrates that Rotary remains strong in today’s world.
In 2021, Rotary in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific will be 100 years old following the establishment of Rotary Clubs in Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington in 1921.
The Rotary Give Every Child A Future project will celebrate 100 years of service and in collaboration with UNICEF plans to vaccinate the most disadvantaged children and adolescent girls across the Pacific to prevent:
- In women, cervical cancer
- In children, severe diarrhoea caused by rotavirus and meningitis, blood infections and pneumonias caused by pneumococcal disease
Rotary and UNICEF are aiming to vaccinate 100,000 children over four years but this is just the beginning. This project will help strengthen the Pacific’s broader health systems and ensure the sustainable delivery of these vaccines into the future.
The Project
Rotary will work with UNICEF to introduce three life-saving vaccines across nine Pacific Island countries; the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Samoa, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
The Asian Development Bank is financing the introduction of these vaccines into four of the countries (Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa and Tuvalu) while Rotary will fund regional and other supporting activities in those four countries and fully fund the programme in the other five countries.
