District Governor Lorne’s Update - By the Numbers

Vancouver Sunrise members welcomed District Governor (DG) Lorne Calder to our meeting for his “official visit” and presentation on November 24th.

Lorne launched the meeting by presenting a series of awards. Congratulations and a big thank you to club members Sarah and Thomas Reppchen for their achievement of Paul Harris Society and Polio Plus Society membership – the first recognizing $1000 USD / year individual donations to the RI Foundation and the latter $100 USD / year individual donations to Rotary’s Polio Plus campaign.  Sarah and Thomas are pictured above receiving their award pins.

DG Lorne continued the award procession by presenting Past President Carlos Obregon with a Polio Plus recognition for achieving the annual goal set last year for our club's fundraising for the Polio Plus campaign. Thanks to all members for putting those Happy Bucks to good use!

Drawing upon his finance background, DG Lorne brought the numbers and dollars to life with an accounting of the global and local impacts and achievements of Rotarians, including:
  • Reducing the number of annual polio cases from 50,000 in 1985 to 2 in 2021 and the number of endemic countries from 125 in 1985 to 2 in 2021.
  • District 5040 and RI globally each providing an estimated 67,749 volunteer hours in the District and 47 million volunteer hours globally and $4.5M and $4B in economic impact respectively through their service efforts and financial contributions.
  • 40,000+ heart operations funded by Rotary worldwide along with 194 countries signed on to eradicate cervical cancer in case you thought polio was the only disease Rotary is addressing.
Our DG also challenged us to support the goals set by RI President Shekhar Mehta, including increasing the donations to the RI Foundation and growing Rotary from 1.2M members to 1.3M members.  This includes his “stretch goal” of increasing membership in District 5040 from 1277 to 1500 in support of the RI target.  
 
We were delighted that Lorne’s own membership recruitment campaign started with his partner Sue who joined us for breakfast.  Thank you to Sue and Lorne for visiting and inspiring us!