Nancy Edmonds Hanson

The Recital with a Cause showcases the area’s best classical musical talents, including these teens in 2018.

When F-M Rotarians wrap up their 2023 Recital with a Cause, they’ll achieve a goal almost unimaginable a decade ago: By showcasing area teens’ musical talent for a dozen years, they will have generated half a million dollars for the children of the world.

The event’s name tells the whole story. On May 4, seven high-school classical performers will be in the spotlight at First Lutheran Church – the “recital” in the name. An equally important mission, though, will be present just off the stage – Polio Plus, the 35-year-old project of Rotary International that has nearly wiped poliomyelitis from the face of the earth.

John Andreasen of Moorhead came up with the idea in 2010. “I was in the shower, where some of my best ideas occur to me,” the Lutheran minister confides. As president of Moorhead Rotary, he had heard the international service club’s call to step up their support of the polio campaign. They were winning, but needed more support to carry the Salk vaccine to every corner of the world.

Andreasen was uniquely qualified to blend the interests of young virtuosos with support for Polio Plus. His daughter, Karin Andreasen Gambell, had found her passion for the violin at the age of three, inspired by an appearance of polio survivor Itzhak Perlman on “Sesame Street.” He recognized the challenges faced by families of young players, from lessons and travel to the sky-high cost of professional-quality instruments, and longed for a larger stage where others could appreciate their talents.

He brought the idea to the four local Rotary clubs – Fargo Downtown, West and AM clubs, along with their Moorhead counterpart. (A fifth club, FM PM Rotary, has since formed and joined the group.) Working with the F-M Symphony Orchestra and Fargo-Moorhead Area Youth Symphonies, they put together a program of half a dozen musicians, many of them winners of the FMSO’s Young Artists Solo Competition.

Representatives of the five clubs work together to plan the annual event. The foundation was laid by Andreasen, Gary Nolte, Sam Wai and Russ Hanson This year’s team, along with John, includes Ken Retzer, Tom Riley, Mark Hulbert and Mary Gessele, along with other volunteers.

Featured in this year’s program are young artists Jacob Schwengler, Amanda Li, Elsa Ruth Pryor, Ian Kronbeck, Jacob Hansen and Rick Peng.

That first concert generates $8,000 in revenue from donations and ticket sales, netting $6,000 for the polio campaign. It continued to grow for the next 10 years, skipping over the pandemic years. In 2022, when it resumed, the total raised was $61,000, with $52,000 earmarked for Polio Plus and $6,500 divided between the two symphony youth programs. In total, recitals have raised $218,000 – $157,500 for Polio Plus and $34,050 for the musical organizations after expenses.

So where does the half-million figure come from? All Rotary support is tripled by a two-to-one match by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which joined the Rotary International polio initiative shortly after its inception. Together, the FM Rotary project has provided full immunity to 564,000 children and prevented 11,280 of them from suffering moderate to severe effects from the disease.

And the partnership between the service organization and the Gates Foundation, along with the World Health Organization, has changed the global picture. In 1988, when they began, 350,000 cases of the three polio strains were reported around the planet. In 2021, there were just five, limited to Pakistan and Afghanistan. (Last year, a few cases unexpectedly popped up in the United Kingdom and U.S.)

Two of the three wild polio strains have been eradicated so far. World health agencies declared the Type 3 pathogen extinct in 2019; Type 2 had been wiped out by 2015. That can be said of only one other disease in human history – smallpox.

But Andreasen points out the battle is not yet won. “We have to continue vaccinations to insure the remaining virus doesn’t make a comeback,” he points out. “And Rotary’s efforts have had so much impact beyond giving vaccine. The same teams help prevent other diseases through things like distributing malaria nets and providing other medical vaccines. Polio Plus has created jobs, improved health care – especially in the Third World — and supported clean water.” That’s critical because the polio virus is spread through  water.

“We can look forward to a day when polio will be remembered only in textbooks, and when every child will thrive in a polio-free world,” he suggests. That’s beautiful music to Rotarians’ ears.

The Recital with a Cause begins at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 4, at First Lutheran Church. For more information and to donate, go to www.FMRotaryFoundation.org/