A crazy idea of doing a Zombie Community project after Covid to bring Awareness of Rotary into the limelight and to get families itching to get out of lockdown to do something, has now morphed into a Polio+ Fundraiser.It all started by getting students from the Greater Fort Erie Secondary School (GFESS) to participate in acting out as Zombies. Thanks to the Drama/English teacher and students who managed to make an outdoor haunted “pathway” of destruction and strewn cars. Yes, it was quite funny to see Rotarians park their cars in crazy positions you would see in a movie. The grass and tree portion added more hiding sites for the zombies.
In all, it was quite a joy to hear the occasional screams from kids who “jumped” out of their pants; especially when Zombies hidden inside a cargo van pulled up the cargo door and grabbed a high school student (part of the “drama club”) and pulled into the van.
In its 1st year, we handed a single page flyer explaining about polio, iron lung, purple fingers, and even showed a picture of our Peace bridge in Purple. We thought: what a waste; that families probably skimmed the flyer and maybe threw it away into the recycle bin. This thought paved the way to the Rotary Zombie Invasion Graphic Comic Book (RotZi). We invited GFESS’ art teacher now to have his students draw comic strips for us to publish. We figured students will keep their own artwork just to remember or maybe use it for their portfolio to College Art school. Also, we sought sponsors/ad buyers/vendors to include their business card/logo to be part of the RotZi Graphic Book. This was a win win; kids and artists kept the books and polio information, and ad buyers got long term advertising value. And we raised money for Polio+.
The RotZi event is in its 6th year with streamlined acting in front of multiple backdrops. And the Graphic book is in its 5th year. So far we have given out a $500 Drama Scholarship for 5 years and we expect to give a 6th one in June 2027. And we will hit our target goal of 1K to the Polio+ Foundation. By the way, our students get their volunteer hours to graduate too.
Who knows? Maybe we will have a Zombie Halloween Dance for the adults in the future, this project is always “Zombie rotting”, oops, erh, I mean “Zombie morphing”. Maybe another nearby club would like to help morph this into a Zombie Festival?