To celebrate the end of his year as the President of the Rotary Club of Ashby Castle, Mark Arjoo is taking on a marathon open water swim to raise funds and awareness for the Rotary-supported End Polio Now charity.

On Sunday August 4, Mark will be part of the Rutland Water SwimRutland event - covering a 2.5 mile (4km) distance.

This is the furthest he has ever swam - and will be an extreme physical challenge. 

Mark told Ashby Nub News: "This is the second event I've done, I took part in the Great North Swim last summer in Lake Windermere.

"I did 3K there - it got a bit choppy, but I did it in 58 minutes and came fifth in my age group. I was a competitive, county swimmer when I was younger.

"But I started open water swimming a couple of years ago and really took to it.

"Last year, I thought I could raise some money as well while doing the Great North Swim and decided to do the same this year.

"I wanted to do another event, it keeps me focused on training and gives me something to work towards.

"This is another 1K on top of last year, and I trained this week where I did 2,700metres. So I'm feeling okay going into the Rutland Water event."

Since 1985, Rotary's key humanitarian priority has been to rid the world of polio.

Rotary spearheaded the campaign at a time when there were over 1,000 polio cases a day in 125 countries, paralysing and even killing children. Today, the number of cases is down by 99.9 per cent.

Over the last 35 years, Rotary members, working with communities around the world, have contributed more than US$2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to the fight to end polio. 

Because of the efforts of Rotary, nearly 19 million people who would otherwise have been paralysed are walking, and more than 1.5 million people are alive who would otherwise have died.

Despite there only being a handful of cases left in the world, continued campaigning, health worker training and vaccination programmes are essential to stop the disease returning and ensuring the world is certified polio-free. 

Over 400 million children still have to receive their polio vaccinations by the Global Polo Eradication Initiative (GPEI) partners multiple times every single year in more than 50 countries.

Failure to eradicate polio could result in as many as 200,000 new cases worldwide every year within a decade.

You can donate to Mark's swim HERE.