Purple Pinkie

So what is Purple Pinkie?

When children are vaccinated against polio, they have a purple stamp put on one of their little fingers.  In this way the immunisation team knows who has been vaccinated.

Each Purple Pinkie brings us closer to making polio history.

Running a Purple Pinkie day is a great way to raise public awareness of the efforts being made to eradicate polio and to raise funds towards these efforts. 

Donate as little as 50p on a Purple Pinkie day - this pays for a single immunisation - and get a purple pinkie.  Tell people why your little finger is purple, and see if they will also contribute.  Simple, effective, purple.  :-)  

Find out more at the District 1240, Essex and Hertfordshire, Purple Pinkie website or in the handbook produced by District 6940, Florida.

Paints/ Colouring for use with Purple Pinkie Campaign

District 1240 spent some time during its Purple Pinkie campaign 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 we 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.

Ultimately, clubs in our District 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 our 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.

We 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.