The Rotary Club of Ballina-on-Richmond is holding a charity screening of the recent Helen Reddy biopic I Am Woman to help eradicate polio.
This one-night-only big screen experience is happening at 6.45pm on Monday 26 October at Ballina Fair Cinemas.
I Am Woman is mostly set in the US, but is actually an Australian production, shot in Sydney and starring Tilda Cobham-Hervey.
It tells the story of Australian singer and global phenomenon Helen Reddy, who shot to global stardom in the 70s, and died very recently.
Rotary has exclusive rights to show the movie in Australian cinemas, for the End Polio campaign.
Seats are limited due to COVID restrictions, so Rotary is urging people to book now at Ballina Fair Cinemas.
The trailer can be seen below.
All in a good cause
All funds raised from the movie night will be donated to The Rotary Foundation for the ‘End Polio’ campaign, with the intention of ending polio for good, globally.
The Ballina fundraiser will be one of thousands of fundraisers to be held by Rotary clubs around the world in support of World Polio Day on 24 October.
So far, Rotary members around the world have contributed more than $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to protect more than 2.5 billion children in 122 countries from this paralyzing disease. Rotary and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative now close to eradicating polio worldwide.
More big numbers
At the end of the 1980s, more than 350,000 children were paralyzed by polio every year. This figure has now been reduced by 99.9 percent, but the battle against polio is not over.
Because of eradication efforts, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative say 19 million people who would otherwise have been paralyzed by polio are walking, and 1.5 million people who would otherwise have died are alive.
If all eradication efforts stopped today, then within 10 years polio could paralyze as many as 200,000 children each year.
The global effort to eradicate polio has already saved more than $27 billion in health care costs since 1988, and expects to save $14 billion more by 2050.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative have suggested that eradication of the disease would be one of history’s greatest public health achievements, with polio following smallpox to become only the second human disease eradicated from the world.
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