BETHEL — Fifth-grader Ben Alford was so pleased that he could take part in a movement to help prevent polio around the world that he had the tips of all 10 fingers painted purple.

“I felt it was important to have all fingers painted. I want to be part of getting rid of polio,” Ben said.

Ben, and virtually every child in SAD 44’s three elementary schools, has been a part of an educational and fundraising effort headed up by the Bethel Rotary Club for the past few weeks.

On Wednesday afternoon, children from Crescent Park Elementary School celebrated the fundraising effort by listening to a polio survivor and proudly showing their purple pinkies while music teacher Linda Stowell led them in singing “We Are the World.”

The pinkies were painted purple as a symbol. Whenever a child from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria or India receive a polio vaccine, that child’s pinky finger is painted purple to show that they have received the vaccine, said Marta Opie, another fifth-grader who had both pinkies painted purple.

Children and staff from Crescent Park, Woodstock and Andover elementary schools raised nearly $1,000 that will be given to the local Rotary Club, and used to vaccinate children in one of the four countries still struggling with the incapacitating disease.

Children were asked to bring in $1 so they could have a pinky painted. The $1 donation provides about two vaccinations. Those who couldn’t bring in $1, still could have a pinky painted because some youngsters brought in more than $1.

Rotarian Paige Crockett of Bethel said a fellow Rotarian, Michele Perejada, and SAD 44 Superintendent David Murphy’s daughter, Erin, returned a few weeks ago from Nigeria where 10,000 children were vaccinated under a program by the national Rotary Club.

Crockett said the club has been searching for a way to bring awareness to polio, and to find activities to support polio eradication. Other schools across the country have held “purple pinky” events. This is the first time for SAD 44 schools, Crescent Park Principal Levi Brown said.

Featured speaker Ann Lee Hussey, a polio survivor and Rotary governor of 41 clubs in Maine and southern New Hampshire, told the story of a pebble dropped into a pond. That one tiny splash becomes wider and wider, symbolizing the effect one small effort can have on many.

“I hope the kids get the analogy of the pebble in the pond,” Brown said.

Prior to the Crescent Park assembly, several speakers, including a local physician and a woman who helped with vaccinations in one of the four countries, spoke with children about the disease.

Hussey also spoke about polio and plans for its eradication to Telstar Regional High School students earlier in the day.

[email protected]