Wheels of Hope is a fully owned and operated Traverse City Rotary Club organization that reports to our Club Board just like every other committee in our club. We are a 501c3, but only because we raise money from people outside the club who want their contributions to build wheelchairs to be tax-deductible. Otherwise, we are just like every other committee in the Traverse City Rotary Club. You may recall that our club recognizes our weekly club presenters by “contributing to help build wheelchairs for polio survivors in Nigeria.” That is Wheels of Hope in action.
The Wheels of Hope Board (that is what we call our “committee”) began a revitalization program about 10 months ago with the goal of doubling our annual fundraising goal from $10,000 currently to $20,000. Doing that would enable Ayuba Gufwan, our Rotarian partner in Nigeria, to build 133 more wheelchairs every year and give them to polio survivors free so they can go to school, get an education and a better job, get married, raise a family and live a life of dignity – Transform another person’s life for only $150.
Part of that revitalization has been to hire a local social media expert to ramp up our Facebook presence, making it a more productive fundraising tool. The Coronavirus sort of got in the way of our revitalization program but our expertise has been very helpful over the past couple of months, anyway. One of the ways to help make her work more productive is to have as many of our Rotary Community (That is YOU and all the members of the TC Rotary club) “LIKE” the Wheels of Hope Facebook page and “SHARE” the page with all your friends, asking them to “LIKE “ it too. That’s the way Social Media works – it’s all about numbers.
So our request is that you “LIKE” our Facebook page and SHARE it with all, or a large group of your personal friends. The reason is simple. As a Rotarian we “Do good in the world”. One of the many ways our club does this is Wheels of Hope raises money to build wheelchairs for polio survivors in Nigeria. Our web site is http://www.wheelsofhope.net/ . We are NOT asking you to ask your friends for money, we just want you and your friends to “like” our page and be aware of what wheels of Hope is doing.
Another part of our revitalization was to make a new video to tell our story – and to help us raise money. Here is a link to our new 90 second video. Hope you like it! We will be circulating this video as far and wide as we can, very shortly. We animated our logo, too. Did you see that in the beginning of this piece?
Thanks for your help and support to make Wheels of Hope more productive, and to help Ayuba build more wheelchairs to transform the lives of more polio survivors in Nigeria.
Click Here for the whole story by the Record-Eagle
Wonderful Rotary of Traverse City centennial story, Thank you Traverse City Record-Eagle. ...“The real value of ‘striking black gold’ was not just the money. The real value and lasting impact was the way a group of ordinary citizens responded to the opportunity and used it not for their personal benefit, but for the benefit of the entire region. I’d like people to feel motivated to do the same; think beyond themselves, think about the good of the whole and act in accordance with kindness,” Marsha Smith said #Rotarycharities#peopleofaction#rotarycluboftraversecity
Great Q&A article...Responses by our Rotary Club of Traverse City's Centennial Committee Chair Dale Chilcote. A special thank you to MyNorth.com & Allison Jarrell for helping us share our awesome 100-year anniversary story.
