RCOY Annual Fundraising Gala, Sat., November 13, 2010
“Building Communities, Bridging Continents”
Fundraising Gala
Westin Prince Hotel
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Rotary International President-Nominee Banerjee
Targets Polio Eradication As His Top Priority
As president-Nominee, Banerjee oversees Rotary’s top priority of eradicating polio, a crippling and potentially fatal disease that still threatens children in Africa and Asia – including India. Since 1985, Rotary club members worldwide have contributed more than US$800 million and countless volunteer hours to the effort, and Rotary is now working to raise an additional $200 million to meet a $355 million challenge grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Great progress has been made, and the incidence of paralytic polio infection has plunged worldwide from 350,000 cases in 1988 to fewer than 2,000 in 2008.
As one of the four remaining polio endemic countries, which also include Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan, India’s fight against polio remains strong with the volunteer and financial support of more than $106 million from Rotary. In addition, Rotary's sustained political, bureaucratic and religious advocacy efforts at national, state and district levels have made a discernible impact on the program in India. As the past chair of the Southeast Asia Regional PolioPlus Committee and member of Rotary’s International PolioPlus Committee, President-Nominee Banerjee spearheaded many of Rotary’s novel initiatives, which have given a new push to the polio eradication program in India. To learn more about polio eradication, visit www.rotary.org/endpolio or www.polioeradication.org .
Rotary also sponsors the largest privately funded international scholarship program in the world. Since 1947, Rotary has contributed roughly $500 million to fund a year of study abroad for 38,000 students from 100 countries. These cultural ambassadors use the skills and knowledge they acquire through their time abroad to advance the cause of international understanding, goodwill, and peace. Rotary also sponsors seven Rotary Centers for International Studies in peace and conflict resolution at eight leading universities in six different countries.
On, November 13, 2010 , Rotary Club of York (RCOY) will hold a fundraising dinner gala at the Westin Prince Hotel, Don Mills in response to the call to duty to support Rotary $200 Million Challenge.
In addition to PolioPlus project RCOY also commits to other international projects and local community projects.
We would like very much to invite you to support this event with your generous sponsorship.
We promise our gala will be an enjoyable and meaningful evening with entertainments among a unique cross-section of successful people, Rotarians, friends, and relatives.
On behalf of the Rotary Club of York and the beneficiaries of the Rotary programs, we would like to thank you for your generosity in advance.
Joseph Luk
Chair, Gala Organizing Committee
View Sponsorship Package.
"The Future of Rotary Is In Your Hands" Fundraising Gala, September 26, 2009
This year's gala has been our most successful to date! With the help of all our members, we were able to raise approx. $28,000 for our club to donate to various causes next year. This is the most our gala has raised to date. Considering that this year was a recession year and only 2 months ago, we only had 180 tickets sold, the 310 head count was quite a feat! A thanks to Gala Chair Peter Wong for rallying all our members and the community to come together.
The Charity Bazaar drew quite a crowd and our vendors did brisk business while doing a great job of promoting their companies. The Bazaar, Silent Auction, and Raffles were a large part of our success this year. We hope to continue this tradition and hope that our vendors will continue to support us.
The theme this year was "Rotary is in Our Hands". Many of our seasoned members worked with newer members to transfer their skills so that our club will be more well rounded and there will be more hands to share in the responsibility of the future of Rotary.
To add to our growing family, we welcomed our 2 new members, Max Weng and Ardell Luo.
We were lucky enough to have some very talented young people perform at the gala. The performances began with 3 dances from the Allegro School of dance and ended with a rousing vocal finale from a group of 4 young singers, called The Champions.
The torch has been passed along, with our fabulous volunteers taking excellent care of their duties and attention to detail. We thank them all for their hard work. Maybe we have some future Rotarians in the works?
View Photo Album
Peter Wong
