PINKIE

The Purple Pinkie Project & Purple Pinkie Week

Throughout the world, each time a volunteer administers a polio vaccine, a child’s pinkie is coloured purple with the topical solution Gentian Violet - temporarily marking them to prevent double dosage on National Immunization Days and to search-out children who were missed.

A Rotary Purple Pinkie Project builds upon this procedure. It began in the Rotary Club of Lake City, Florida when they called upon local school children to help raise funds to immunize other children from polio. The Project has been successfully duplicated by Rotary Clubs all over the world as a purple pinkie has become a symbol of Rotary’s fight to end polio. School child are asked to raise/donate at least 50p (the estimated cost for one immunization). The pupils get their pinkie purple painted as symbol of one child saved from polio.

BENEFITS
• Additional children will be immunized from polio and we will be closer to the goal of eliminating polio worldwide.
• International understanding will be advanced as children from non-endemic countries are made aware of the polio problem in other nations and become part of the solution.
• Rotarians get a chance to talk about Rotary and great works of service to the next generation.
• By partnering with Interact and fellow Rotarians, service relationships will be built.

The project can also be extended beyond the schools application. During other events including street collections the “reward” for making a donation can also be the marking of the pinkie. This then becomes a valuable talking point for the next few days as the colour wears off.

Individually or combing with neighboring Clubs, Rotarians should be thinking of options for a Purple Pinkie Week in February 2010 as part of “The Window on the World of Rotary” click here for more details. The week could include a number of purple topics including colouring of hair or beards for sponsorship, businesses having purple based-based days, companies with purple products, supporting the polio effort on their packaging, dress down days, community quiz nights, musical evenings, collections at supermarkets and train stations. What about ending the week with a formal dinner? Think-up your own ideas and help Rotary get nearer to reaching the goal set by the Bill & Melinda Gates challenge.

MAKING PURPLE PINKIES

Rotarians have spent some time during previous Purple Pinkie campaigns looking into the use of Dyes/ paints to colour " Pinkies" either to use to make a mark or to colour a finger to show.

Initially they considered Gentian Violet, which is the dye used in the Polio Campaign but ultimately discarded this as it is not used on humans in the UK and could stain clothes.

Most Rotary Clubs have used safe Children's face paint, which can be easily washed off, or child safe purple stamp pads.

Any child safe rubber stamp pad could be used , some of the Clubs used those from the English Stamp Company http://www.englishstamp.com/ . Another Rubber stamp Company that could be tried is Blade Rubber Stamps, 12 Bury Place, Bloomsbury, London QC1A 2JL http://www.bladerubberstamps.co.uk/

When deciding which to use it is important to check that the fluids used are safe for children and do not mark permanently.

It's recommended that when using these colourings, Clubs had wet wipes or similar to clean fingers afterwards as children may wipe their clothing or suck their fingers forgetting they have been marked.

Whenever a Purple Pinkie exercise is carried out in a school or elsewhere it is important that a “Risk Assessment” is undertaken beforehand as in any Rotary event.