The Rotary Club of Silver recently gave donations to New Mexico’s Navajo Relief Project, to a remote Guatemalan village and to Literacy Link-Leamos. In addition, its members have created a game to raise money to help support Rotary International’s PolioPlus efforts.

The local club sent $1,920 to two Albuquerque Rotary Clubs that are coordinating donations of food, jackets, blankets, games and books to the Navajo Nation people in Crownpoint, NM.  

In addition, the club has approved $1,500 to provide in home toilets for an impoverished Guatemalan village.  

The club’s recent donation of $500 to Literacy Link-Leamos will help provide books for Silver City elementary children to take home.

The new fundraising game will take place at 6 p.m. this Saturday, November 14. The club welcomes public participation in the event. People wishing to participate should send an email to info@silvercityrotary.org requesting the link to the Zoom event.

Based on public radio’s “Wait, wait, don’t tell me” program, Rotary’s Fact or Fiction Fundraiser for Polio will involve Rotarians reading three facts related to a central theme, with only one “fact” being true.  Participants will then make bids on which “fact” they think is true. If a participant chooses the correct “fact” the club will make a donation to PolioPlus in that person’s name. If the person guesses incorrectly, that person will be expected to contribute the value of his or her bid to PolioPlus. Either way, the person making the bid will be eligible for a tax deduction.

Rotary’s polio eradication effort has helped get rid of polio in all but two of the world’s countries:  Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“This is an important fundraiser,” says Lucy Falley who is chairing the project. “It has been estimated that if the polio eradication effort Rotary supports were stopped now, as many as 200,000 children could be infected with polio in the next 10 years,” she says.