By Rotary Voices staff

Join the fight to end polio this World Polio Day be tuning in to our global update on Livestream, beginning 24 October, 18:30 Chicago time (UTC-5). The event will feature Jeffery Kluger, a senior writer at TIME Magazine; Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Minda Dentler, a paraplegic athlete and polio survivor; Tessanne Chin, winner of the fifth season of NBC’s TV singing competition The Voice; and Jamaican musician Ziggy Marley.

If you can’t join the live event, you can still join us in making history by sharing your voice online, advocating to your government, or holding your own polio eradication fundraiser. Find out how. Send us photos of your World Polio Day event and we may include them in a photo gallery on Rotary Voices.

A number of polio survivors have also shared their stories with Rotary Voices over the past few years:

Grant Wilkins, past RI director and Colorado Rotary member, writes about his first wife’s battles with polio, including being confined to an iron lung.

Ayuba Burki Gufwan, a Nigerian Rotarian, founded Beautiful Gate to provide wheelchairs for polio survivors.

Linda L. Christianson, a Minnesota polio survivor, was stricken with the disease as an infant and now speaks frequently to school classes and Rotary groups

Anne Lee Hussey, a Maine Rotarians, has taken part in many National Immunization Day events.

Patrick J. Bird, author of A Rough Road, spent almost two months in a recovery unit following contracting the virus at the age of 4 in 1940.

Kurt Sipolski, a freelance writer in California, shares his experiences as a polio survivor

Ade Adepitan, former Paraylmpian and United Kingdom broadcaster, a participant in last year’s Rotary World Polio Day event, contracted the disease in Nigeria before his family immigrated to London.

Ramesh Ferris, a Canadian Rotarian and polio survivor, writes about meeting India’s last reported polio case.

John H. G. Soe, an Indonesian Rotary member, on growing up in a Catholic orphanage in Medan and how Rotary changed his life.