Peter Shokeir | [email protected]
The Rotary Club of Jasper is asking people to contribute to a Rotary fundraising campaign for helping eradicate COVID in the world.
In partnership with UNICEF, Rotary is raising funds to help increase equitable access and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to vulnerable populations in low-income countries.
“We’re really aware that nobody’s safe until everybody’s safe, so we’re trying to make sure that we can do something to help some of the parts of the world that are less fortunate than ours,” said Sue Cesco, co-president of the Jasper Rotary Club.
More than 84 per cent of eligible Canadians and 60 per cent of the world population have received their first dose.
In low-income countries, only 9.5 per cent of the population have received at least one dose.
Vaccinating people in low-income countries will not only help the people there but also prevent variants from emerging that could affect the rest of the world.
“We really see the impacts on a community like ours; it’s been quite significant,” Cesco said.
“So, we thought we are a community of travellers—we love to travel, we host travellers—and we thought, you know, we should be looking at the world globally and seeing what we can do to help some of the people who are not able to travel.”
This is not the first time that Rotary has undertaken a vaccination campaign, having worked over the years to eradicate polio across the world.
“I think that’s really one of the reasons why we thought it was our time to join the race and step up our game on this one, because we’ve been really successful in the End COVID Now campaign,” Cesco said.
“And Rotary has an extensive network that’s already all over the world globally to make sure that these products can be distributed effectively, so by joining UNICEF, we’re actually partnering these networks as well, so it’s becoming a huge global initiative.”
At $2.54 CAD for two doses, a donation of $100 will provide two doses for 39 people.
Donors could potentially give $25 and find three other people in order to raise $100, which Cesco called a “give a vax pack.”
With the help of other Rotary Clubs, the goal is to raise $150,000.
