Rotary welcomes District Governor
The Malvern Rotary Club recently met for a monthly meeting at the Malvern Country Club.
Rotary International is a global humanitarian service organization that promotes partnerships between business and professional leaders to benefit people in the community. Rotary members join together to, according to their website, “promote peace; fight disease; provide clean water, sanitation, and hygiene; save mothers and children; support education; grow local economies; and protect the environment.”
The attendees at the Malvern Rotary meeting spent a few minutes hammering out the final details concerning the 2022 Crawfish & Shrimp Boil that was set to take place May 5 at the Malvern- HSC Fairgrounds. Rotary President Andi Whitman then welcomed District Governor Kathy Carter to speak.
Carter is the leader of Rotary District 6170, which encompasses much of the southern, central, and western regions of Arkansas. Carter was there to introduce herself to the Malvern chapter and share information about the organization’s accomplishments in the last year.
Carter began by sharing her personal experiences with polio as a child, and she said that Rotary International’s work in attempting to eradicate the polio virus around the globe is what drew her to become involved in the organization.
According to the organization’s website, “Polio, or poliomyelitis, is a paralyzing and potentially deadly infectious disease that most commonly affects children under the age of 5. The virus spreads from person to person, typically through contaminated water. It can then attack the nervous system.”
Polio can cause paralysis and death in extreme cases. Polio can occur with no accompanying symptoms, but some common signs include sore throat, fever, exhaustion, headache, stomach pain and/ or nausea, and muscle loss.
Polio is suspected to be an ancient disease, but it wasn’t officially identified until 1789 by a London pediatrician. Polio epidemics were not widespread before the 20th century, but the first documented outbreak in the United States was recorded in Vermont, where 132 total cases and 32 deaths were seen.
A 1952 outbreak in the U. S. was the worst ever recorded. According to reports, “Of the 57,628 cases reported that year, 3,145 died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis.”
Two polio vaccines— one officially announced in 1955, the other in 1962— have turned the disease from one of the most feared to virtually nonexistent, but continual attention must be paid to the disease to keep it at bay around the globe.
“In 2003, I was giving some kind of program to the Rotary Club, and during that, they talked about they were collecting money for polio,” Carter said. “And I said, ‘ That’s the club I need to be a part of’, and then found out that Rotary International, this was their initiative, so I became affiliated with it immediately.”
In 1988, Rotary International and the World Health Organization determined to work together and eradicate polio. At that time, there were more than 350,000 children around the world in 129 countries being paralyzed or dying because of the virus.
“By 2016, with Rotary’s
initiative to eradicate polio, we’ve driven those cases down to 42 cases anywhere in the world,” Carter said. “In January 2021, there were two cases found in the entire world.”
“Rotary members have spent about $2.1 million dollars on the eradication of polio,” Carter said. “There have been countless hours of Rotary volunteers, reaching over 3 million children in the last 20 and 30 years, over the eradication of polio.”
“Today polio remains endemic only in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Carter said. “And we can pretty much guess because of political situations there, it’s still hard to get in.”
“We have been told that if we stopped all efforts today, within 10 years, over 250,000 children around the world would begin to contract it again,” Carter said.
“Knowing this, last week in a small, small area in western Africa, it came up in the sewage again, wild polio virus,” Carter said. “We know you have to continue to do the vaccine, so that is what we are about.”
Carter said over 1.2 million people in over 500 Rotary Clubs around the world are currently partnered to continue the neverending fight to eradicate polio. She said the current Rotary International President Shekhar Mehta, of India, has not only taken on the continuing fight against polio, but also women’s and girl’s issues.
“I have literally traveled around the world. I have seen many disparities that seemed intolerable, unnecessary, and at times, unmentionable,” Carter said. “And one of these that I have taken on with our president is period poverty, which is a lack of access to sanitary products, menstrual hygiene education, hand washing facilities, and waste management.”
Carter cited a visit to India, where she spoke with local educators and visited their schools. She said one school she visited had about 3,000 enrolled students but no bathroom facilities. The male students would simply find a spot outside to relieve themselves and return to class, but the female students invariably ended up leaving campus to return home and use the bathroom.
“They go home, and they never come back. It’s just the way it has always worked, and that’s how they do it,” Carter said. The school did have a makeshift port-a-potty, which was essentially a hole in the ground surrounded by four walls, but the situation was not safe or sanitary.
Carter said District 6170 was able to donate $75,000 in September 2021 to the schools in India for the purpose of building what she referred to as “block bathrooms”.
“That means there’s a girls’ side and there’s a boys’ side, there’s water, “Carter said. “They could wash their hands, they could take care of themselves, but the best part about it, there’s security, because the girls could go in on their own side, so they were safe.”
“We also partnered with another Rotary group there, and they’re the ones that make sure it’s being maintained and taken care of,” Carter said. She added that in Oct. 2021, Rotary did a similar project in Mexico.
Officials in India have since told Carter that because of Rotary’s efforts in the country’s school system, they expect in the next three to five years to see over 3,500 female students that would have otherwise dropped out stay in the educational system.
“We think of this as a developing world issue,” Carter said. “It is, but it’s also right here in Arkansas.”
Carter said that in Arkadelphia, Rotary members received a letter from a local school nurse who had spent all her personal funds to purchase sanitary products for female students. The nurse needed help to purchase a washer/dryer set to further address the unanticipated needs of these students.
“This same story could be told in almost every school in Arkansas,” Carter said.
Carter said that the Shriver Report of 2021, which contains information related to the lives and conditions of women in America and is compiled by a nonprofit organization, indicates that over 42 million women and girls in America were impoverished at the time the data was collected.
Carter said some other notable things District 6170 has accomplished the past year include:
•Donating $10,000 to build temporary shelters for victims of Haitian natural disasters.
•Donating $7,500 to help victims of storm weather in the American midwest.
•Starting a fund to benefit victims affected by the war in Ukraine, with over $4,500 collected to date.
Carter applauded the Malvern Rotary Club for the many projects they have been a part of this past year, including the annual Crawfish & Shrimp Boil, the Clothes Closet they helped establish at Malvern School District and the various scholarships the club awards annually.
“I’m excited to see what y’all are doing,” Carter said. “So many things are going on here in Malvern.”
“President Shekar announced that he said, ‘This would be the year we would serve to change lives,’—you have certainly done that,” Carter said. “I want to thank you so much for your leadership, everything you’ve done.”