Rotary members can enjoy discounts on travel, hotels, dining, entertainment, and more through Rotary Global Rewards, a new member benefit program that begins 1 July. If you're an active Rotarian with a My Rotary account, you already have access to all special offers and discounts. Anyone can view the offers, but only Rotary members who sign in to their My Rotary accounts can redeem the discounts. Check back often as more products and services from companies around the world will be added throughout the year.
Rotary President K.R. Ravindran and Rotary's Board of Directors developed the idea for the rewards program to help clubs enhance member satisfaction and retention. The program is also a way to thank members for their service and their generous support of The Rotary Foundation.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Russian was the predominant second language offered in Polish schools, leaving tens of thousands of Polish emigrants without the English skills they needed.
That has changed over the last 25 years. English proficiency drastically improved after the government reformed its education system in 1991. The country overhauled its teaching curriculum and materials and introduced English as the primary foreign language. As of 2013, Poland ranks 8th in the world in English proficiency.
More than 20,000 new cases of cancer are diagnosed every year in Sri Lanka, and many of them prove fatal. The Rotary Club of Colombo, Sri Lanka, set out 10 years ago to save some of those lives by establishing the Cancer Prevention and Early Detection Centre.
In partnership with the National Cancer Control Programme and the Ministry of Health, the center in Colombo has screened more than 35,000 patients, mostly low-income, and detected more than 7,500 cases of abnormalities that required further investigation. The Rotary Club of Birmingham, Alabama, USA, donated a mammography and ultrasound scanner to the center’s breast cancer screening facility.
The Colombo Rotary club is seeking to open early detection clinics in other easily accessible locations throughout Sri Lanka.
Nigeria and the whole continent of Africa is on the cusp of being polio free, Dr. Hamid Jafari told audience members at the Rotary Convention on 8 June in São Paulo, Brazil.
Between 2013 and 2014, the reported cases of polio dropped from 53 to just six in Nigeria. Even more encouraging, said Jafari, is that the last case of polio in Nigeria was reported in July of last year and the last case in all of Africa was reported in Somalia in August.
“With a year of no polio cases in Nigeria tantalizingly close, and no cases in Somalia since August, the tireless work of so many people across the continent is paying off,” said Jafari, director of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative for the World Health Organization. “But it is incredibly important that Nigeria remains vigilant. As long as polio exists anywhere, it will continue to be a threat everywhere.”
