Board 2022 2023
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Welcome to the Rotary Club of Ridgetown

 
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About Our Club
Service Above Self

Service Above Self

We meet In Person
Mondays
Anglican Parish Hall
16 Church
Ridgetown, ON N0P 2C0
Canada
Phone:
(226) 798-0625
Every Second Monday at 1830 hrs. Confirm ahead
Home Page Stories
PolioPlus Society Pins for the Ridgetown Rotary members
At its April 17, 2023 meeting, District 6380 Assistant District Governor Ken Corlett presented every member of the Ridgetown Rotary Club with both a certificate and a lapel pin recognizing them as members of District 6380’s PolioPlus Society. Ken noted that the Ridgetown club was the only club within District 6380’s 44 clubs that had 100% of its members donating to the PolioPlus Society. The purpose of the Society is to encourage Rotary members to give a minimum of $100 US a year to the PolioPlus fund until we achieve our goal of eradicating polio. Rotary International has been active in the elimination of polio worldwide for over 35 years and that eradication is so close to being complete. Rotary International volunteers have helped immunize more than 2.5 billion children against polio in 122 countries. The number of polio cases has been reduced by 99.9 % worldwide. Of the 3 strains of wild poliovirus (type 1, type 2 and type 3), wild poliovirus type 2 was eradicated in 1999 and wild poliovirus type 3 was eradicated in 2020. As of 2022, endemic wild poliovirus type 1 remains in two countries:  Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Front row l-r: Paul Brown, Henny Boeters, Judie Wigcherink, Brian Pasmore
Backrow, l-r: Warren Jansen, Kees Boeters, David Klatt, Jeff Geddes, Reinout Von Martels, Ron Bolohan, Bob Wilson, Joel Van De Hogen, Ben Van Heeswijk, Murray Scoyne, D. 6380 ADG Ken Corlett, Terry Youlton
Rotary Club donates to ShelterBox
At its meeting on Monday, Feb. 13, 2023 the Ridgetown Rotary Club members voted to donate $7200 to ShelterBox for the purchase of 6 shelter boxes to help with the earthquake disaster in Turkey and Syria. ShelterBox and Rotary are official project partners in international relief. ShelterBox is an international disaster relief organization that hand-delivers aid to families devastated by conflict or natural disaster, to give them safe shelter and the tools to rebuild communities.
After reading the article in the July 28th, 2021 edition of the Independent, the Ridgetown Rotary Club, at its Monday, Aug. 9th, 2021 meeting voted unanimously to donate $2000 towards the restoration project of the Ridgetown Cenotaph. In discussing the project before the vote, it was noted that three of our Rotarians, Kees Boeters, Ben Van Heeswijk, and Reinout von Martels all served in the Armed Forces for the Netherlands before they came to Canada. This is another example of the Rotary Club helping out within the Ridgetown community.
The project is being coordinated by the Ridgetown IODE, Confederation Chapter, and the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 243. The cost of the project is $30,500 with well over $20,000 raised to date. It is making it much safer for those interested in reading the names of those from Ridgetown who lost their lives in WW1, WW2, and the Korean War which are listed on the cenotaph.

Every hero has an origin story. “I was 10 years old when the entire journey started,” explains Binish Desai. It began with a cartoon called Captain Planet, an animated TV series from the 1990s about an environmentalist with superpowers. Desai can still recite the show’s refrain: Captain Planet, he’s our hero / Gonna take pollution down to zero! “That tagline stuck in my mind,” he says. “I wanted to do something to help Captain Planet.”

An estimated 500 million people worldwide became infected. Many cities closed theaters and cinemas, and placed restrictions on public gatherings. Rotary clubs adjusted their activities while also helping the sick.

This is how Rotary responded to the influenza pandemic that began in 1918 and came in three waves, lasting more than a year.

The Rotary Club of Berkeley, California, USA, meets in John Hinkel Park during the 1918 flu pandemic.

Photo by Edwin J. McCullagh, 1931-32 club president. Courtesy of the Rotary Club of Berkeley.

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