This Thursday, Narooma Rotary and Narooma Kinema will host Narooma’s evening premiere of the much acclaimed film Lion to help sponsor Michael O’Connor’s marathon walk next month.
Michael is walking 1000km along the Bibbulmun Track from Albany to Perth to raise money both for End Polio Now and for the construction of a school library in the Kenyan village of Rang’l.
Lion is the true story of five-year-old Saroo who gets lost on a train which takes him across India and far away from home and his family. He learns to survive alone before eventually being adopted by an Australian couple.
Twenty-five years later, armed with some memories, determination and Google Earth he sets out to find his birth family and return to his first home.
This is director Garth Davis’ debut feature film.
The cast includes Sunny Pawar, Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, Rooney Mara, David Wenham, Priyanka Bose, Abhishek Bharate.
The Lion fundraiser this Thursday, February 16 costs $20. Wine and nibbles will be available from 7pm, with the film screening at 7.30pm. It is rated PG.
On the fight to end polio: Fewer than 40 children were paralysed by polio in 2016, the lowest number in history with polio limited to a few areas in only three countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.
This is a dramatic decrease on the estimated 350,000 cases per year in 125 countries in 1985, the year that Rotary International initiated a worldwide vaccination effort to eradicate this terrible disease.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative now involves WHO, the US Centers for Disease Control, UNICEF and the Gates Foundation as well as Rotary.
