HOW TO WORK FOR A GLOBAL HAND WASHING DAY

Here is the next step in our Global Hand Washing Day project (a joint project of the RI resource groups in literacy, water and sanitation and health and hunger).
I am sending you a copy of a poster download which any zone-district-club in your area might use. In the case of the Rotary club where I make up, Boynton Beach-Lantana (Florida,USA), what the club plans to do is:
1. Make 600 copies of the poster.
2. Paste a Rotary sticker on each copy ( the club president's son loves to put stickers on dictionaries so he will gladly do the same for these posters).
3. Put a copy of the poster in each of the 600 dictionaries which the club will be distributing to third-graders in October.
4.On October 15th, the official Global Handwashing Day -- Make an official presentation of posters for each of the classrooms in each of the 7 elementary schools where the club does the Dictionary Project ( Hopefully with some local publicity).
There are many other things an ambitious club might do. Plenty of ideas are available at www.globalhandwashingday.org. In fact, I pulled the attached poster out of the manual which you will find on that site.
There is a problem for countries where English or Spanish is not the official language. You will have to decide what, if anything, to do about that. But note how Dr. Henrique Pinto, one of our zone coordinators, handled the problem (read the e-mail below and check out the web site which he mentions). Finally, since I mentioned Henrique, let me make you aware of the special role he is playing in our world-wide effort to eradicate illiteracy. Henrique is the leader of the organization of Portuguese-speaking Rotary districts/countries. This year he is serving as Doug Kent's zone coordinator for the Portuguese speaking countries in Africa. That arrangement was made possible first because Doug asked for it and second because President John Kenny approved of the idea. That makes three Rotary heroes for today -- Zone Coordinator Henrique, Area Coordinator Doug and President John.
The Future of Rotary Was In Their Hands and They Lived Up to the Challenge. Let them be your role models in this 3-resource group project to promote Global Hand Washing Day.

Richard Hattwick

World General Coordinator for Literacy

September 09

PHOTOS: Henrique Pinto and Walter Firmino (WHO Focal Point) at Lunda North Airport, Angola 2004; Abdulrahman Funsho (Nigeria), my friend and colleague as a physician, an oustanding member of Reach Out to Africa Committee, and Aisha, his lovely wife, Los Angeles, 2005 (Hpinto)