The Riverside Rotary Club recently launched the Purple Pinky Project at Stockton Elementary to help raise awareness of polio with the hopes of eradicating the disease.

For every Stockton student who brought back a signed permission slip, the Riverside Rotary donated one dollar, which is the approximate cost of vaccinating two children against polio.  These students were given a purple pinkie as their own personal reminder that they have supported and helped protect other children from the polio virus. 

The origins of this project relate back to the actual immunization of children. It may be hard to believe but polio still exists in the world today, and it's just a plane ride away. Polio, an infectious disease that can cause paralysis and sometimes death, still strikes children, mainly under the age of five, in parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East.  In other countries when a child receives a vaccine, his/her pinky is dyed purple. This allows volunteers to be able to roam the village and vaccinate any child without a purple pinky.

The Purple Pinkie Project raises money for the vaccine to be given to these children by Rotary volunteers.  As there is no cure for polio, the best protection is prevention.  For as little as .60 cents worth of vaccine, a child can be protected against this crippling disease for life. In 1985, Rotary International decided to direct its focus on eliminating polio worldwide. It would only be the second disease wiped from the face of the earth.