Join us on Friday, October 3 at Maggiano's to welcome Susan Paget, CEO of the Rotary Action Group for Family Health and AIDS Prevention. Before Sue speaks, Marion Bunch will share a brief history of how Marion met Sue and the role she played in building the Rotary Family Health Days program to the success that it is today.

Sue Paget’s first connection with Rotary was in 2000 when she was contracted by Rotary International to work in South Africa on the Polio Eradication Private Sector Campaign working with Rotary leadership, Government and corporations in South Africa.

Sue was subsequently invited to join the Rotary Club of Johannesburg in 2002 as a volunteer and over the subsequent years worked on various campaigns in a project management capacity, including RI President Jonathan Majiyagbe’s Presidential Conference.  It was at this conference that Sue met Marion Bunch, Founder and CEO of the Rotary Action Group Rotarians for Family Health & AIDS Prevention, who was a guest speaker at this event.

The encounter proved transformative, leading to Sue’s appointment in 2006 as the Director of the ANCHOR (African Network for Children Orphaned and at Risk), a five-year Program in Africa aimed at supporting orphaned and vulnerable children.   

The Rotary Family Health Days program was then developed and successfully piloted in 2011 in Uganda. However, to achieve proof of concept on the African continent, the program required implementation in the major country of South Africa.  Sue was contracted by Marion and the RFHA board in 2013 to lead this initiation. 

Although the framework for partnerships between the Rotary Districts, the CDC, USAID, the Ministry of Health and The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation were in place on paper, Sue’s role was to build an organization to implement and execute this massive country-wide program.    She had to plan an organization of four Rotary districts (225 Clubs) and how they would interact with the Ministry of Health at the National, Regional and District levels, work with the Coca-Cola executives, the major Media houses, and particularly the implementing organizations of the Centers for Disease Control and USAID.  The program ran for three days at 140 sites across the country. The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation was the primary sponsor of this program and granted $1.2 Million USD over a four=year period.   The public private partnership is still intact after 11 years.

Recognition soon followed.  In 2014, both Rotary International and The Centers for Disease Control produced documentaries of the program.  Rotary International won the prestigious Silver Telly Award for Best Documentary in the 2014 year.

Sue was asked to join the RFHA Board in 2015.  She stepped up to the CEO role in 2019 after Marion retired.  It was difficult for the next 4 years because of COVID, but her tenacity and ability to build relationships paid off, culminating in two successful grants amounting to $3.7 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  This remarkable two-year pilot program, in collaboration with the B&MG Foundation, aims to integrate the Polio initiative into RFHA’s Rotary Family Health Days program in 7 additional countries in Africa. 

To date the RFHD program has served over 3.5 million beneficiaries with over 13.5 million health services.   The program has now expanded to 16 countries in Africa and in India in the State of Nadya Pradesh. 

Sue’s accomplishments earned her the Paul Harris Fellow four times, RFHA’s  Jerry’s HERO award and was recently awarded the prestigious Service Above Self Award by Rotary International -- Rotary’s highest service award to an individual.

She lives in Cape Town, South Africa with her husband Trevor.