Charity Gardeners’ Question Time (GQT) tickets available online

A child in the village of Azuretti, Cote d’Ivoire, receives polio vaccine during a National Immunization Day, 27 April 2013. For more information go to http://www.endpolionow.org

A charitable fundraising Gardeners’ Question Time (GQT) will be in the Creamery Cafe at Apley Farm Shop on Friday 19 May. The event is being organised by the Telford Centre Rotary Club, fundraising for the eradication of polio (see below). Tickets (£25) are already available online now – just click HERE. They include a tour of Apley Walled Garden, canapes & a drink & the question time, hosted by BBC Radio Shropshire’s Paul Shuttleworth.

Panellists will include Chelsea gold award winner David Wassell & Apley Walled Garden’s Head Gardener Phil Allen who you may have heard regularly on BBC Radio Shropshire’s Gardeners’ Question Time on Sundays at 12noon.

How to buy your tickets

• Online by clicking HERE
• At the farm shop cash tills
• Calling the Apley Farm Shop & asking us to take card payment
• Click HERE to email us
• Posting a cheque payable to Telford Centre Rotary Club to GQT, Landau Ltd, Landau Court, Wellington, Telford, TF1 1HE

Once you’ve bought your tickets, you can submit your questions by clicking HERE.

Timetable for the evening 

• 5:30pm meet at Apley Farm Shop TF11 9EF
• 6-7pm Apley Walled Garden tour
• 7:30pm back at Apley Farm Shop. Canapes & drinks (barbecue not included in ticket price)
• 8:00pm Question Time starts
• 9:30pm approx end of Question Time

What are we fundraising for ?

Rotary Clubs & the battle to eradicate polio from the world 

Polio is a paralysing & potentially fatal disease that still affects children in some parts of the world.

The virus invades the nervous system & can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. It can strike at any age but mainly affects children under 5. It is incurable but completely preventable by vaccination.

Since 1985 when Rotary launched its Polio Plus Program, the first global initiative to eradicate the disease by mass immunisation of children, Rotary has contributed more than £1 billion & countless volunteer hours to immunise more than 2.5 billion children in 122 countries.

Rotary has lobbied & encouraged national governments throughout the world to support the programme & over £5 billion has been spent by donor governments on the immunisation programme.

Rotary is part of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative that as well as Rotary includes the WHO, UNICEF & the US Centres for Disease Control & Prevention.

Today there are only two countries, Pakistan & Afghanistan that have never stopped transmission of the virus although there was a small recurrence in Nigeria early in 2016 which shows the need for constant vigilance to ensure total eradication is complete.

Since the launch of the programme, a reduction of 99.9% has been achieved & only 75 cases were reported last year compared with over 1000 per day in the 1980s.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has agreed to donate $2 for every $1 raised by Rotary up to $35 million per year until 2018.