With the world on target to becoming polio free, Rotary International District 6800 is shifting its focus to juvenile crime. Called the Rotary Family and Youth Initiative, the project is backed by 39 chapters spread across Mississippi and calls for slashing juvenile delinquency by 50 percent in five years. So far Rotary leaders have met with area judges, police officers, county officials, and public health leaders to begin mobilizing the project. While many people have called it “audacious” and “crazy,” Rotary members maintain that who better to eradicate juvenile crime than the very organization that initiated action to put polio in its place. “It sounds impossible, I know, but we are all in,” said Roy Ray, a retired Army colonel and Rotarian, who is coming out of retirement to help lead the project.

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