Tickets remain for annual Rotary International Dinner Friday

A limited number of tickets remain available for the annual Rotary International Dinner scheduled for Friday night at The Arena in Corbin.

Officials said approximately 60 of the 500 tickets for the event are still available.

Tickets, which are $25 each, may be purchased from any London or Corbin Rotary Club member, at The Arena box office, or through ticketmaster.com.

Tables of eight may be reserved at a cost of $250.

Joe Caldwell, one of the event organizers, said selections for food from more than 20 countries around the world will be available at the event.

Countries represented this year include: Chile, Italy, China, Greece, England, The Philippines, Switzerland, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Cuba, Germany, Ireland, India, Pakistan, Ghana, Malaysia, Kenya, Lithuania, Poland, Scotland and the United States.

The food is served buffet style, with guests going up to each country’s table and taking the offerings they would like.

“You can sample all of them or as many as you want to,” Caldwell said. “You can go get a second plate and even a third plate if you like.”

“We serve until everybody is fed and/or we run out of food,” he said.

Dinner will begin at 7 p.m..

All proceeds go to Rotary International’s efforts to eradicate polio.

Caldwell said there remains two countries reporting new cases of polio, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“So far this year, there have been three cases reported in the first two months,” Caldwell said, noting that approximately 20 new cases were reported in 2017 and 71 in 2016.

Caldwell explained that in Pakistan there has been several instances where volunteers and doctors have been killed because someone believed they were trying to do something more than administer the vaccine to a child.

“Once health officials say there are no reported cases, the countdown begins. If there are no reported cases over a three-year period, the disease is considered to have been eradicated,” Caldwell noted.