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This is Your Father Speaking

Posted June 30, 2013 by jimhigley

Dear Kids,

There’s a lot of things I love about your generation. And at the top of the list is your incredible sense of social responsibility. I truly marvel at your ability to rally behind a cause, support someone in need, or just fearlessly speak your thoughts on how we can do a better job of taking care of our world. And each other.

Which is why I’m writing you today. I’d like to ask that you get behind one other cause: be a part of the effort to End Polio Now.

Polio? You’re thinking that was something Grandma and Grandpa worried about, right?

Well, you are right. Sort of.

You see, the fight to eradicate polio is almost done. So close. Within inches of the finish line. But there’s still a tiny way to go and I want you to help.

Our world’s big push to end polio – around the globe – began almost 30 years ago when Rotary International began immunizing children everywhere against this disease.  And after immunizing more than 2 billion children against polio, Rotary and its partners are on the verge of wiping polio off the planet. When they began the fight in 1985, polio affected 350,000 people – mostly children – in 125 countries every year. Since then, however, polio has been reduced by 99 percent.

On top of that, worldwide cases are now in the hundreds and they are confined to only three countries.

But if we don’t complete the worldwide job of fighting this disease, polio could quickly resurge, with devastating consequences. More than 10 million children could be paralyzed in the next 40 years.

Which brings me to asking for your help with this once-in-a-generation opportunity to rid the world of polio.

What you can do is help spread awareness about all of this by being a part of the World’s Biggest Commercial! Just snap a photo of yourself making the “This Close” sign and upload it into the commercial. Share it with your friends and family and ask them to do the same.

It’s as simple as that!

If you want to do more, go to the End Polio Now website to find out what else you can do to get involved such as writing your government leaders or donating (For 60 cents, a child can be protected against the polio virus for life!).

There’s so much you can do.

But more than anything, join your global family and be a part of the World’s Biggest Commercial right now. It takes a couple of minutes.

The kids of the world need your help. And I promise you, Grandma and Grandpa would be very, very proud.

Love, Dad

What is Polio

• A crippling and potentially fatal infectious disease, polio (poliomyelitis) still strikes children mainly under the age of five in countries in Asia and Africa.
• Polio can cause paralysis and sometimes death.  Because there is no cure for polio, the best protection is prevention through a vaccine.
• Polio can cause paralysis within hours, and polio paralysis is almost always irreversible.
• In the most severe cases, polio attacks the motor neurons of the brain stem, causing breathing difficulty or even death.
• Historically, polio has been the world’s greatest cause of disability.