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About Us
The world's first service club, the
Rotary Club of Chicago, Illinois, USA, was formed on 23 February
1905 by Paul P. Harris, an attorney who wished to recapture in a
professional club the same friendly spirit he had felt in the
small towns of his youth. The name "Rotary" derived from the early
practice of rotating meetings among members' offices.
Rotary's popularity spread throughout
the United States in the decade that followed; clubs were
chartered from San Francisco to New York. By 1921, Rotary clubs
had been formed on six continents, and the organization adopted
the name Rotary International a year later.
As Rotary grew, its mission expanded
beyond serving the professional and social interests of club
members. Rotarians began pooling their resources and contributing
their talents to help serve communities in need. The
organization's dedication to this ideal is best expressed in its
principal motto: Service Above Self. Rotary also later embraced a
code of ethics, called
The 4-Way Test, that has been translated
into hundreds of languages.
During and after World War II,
Rotarians became increasingly involved in promoting international
understanding. In 1945, 49 Rotary members served in 29 delegations
to the United Nations Charter Conference. Rotary still actively
participates in UN conferences by sending observers to major
meetings and promoting the United Nations in Rotary publications.
Rotary International's relationship with the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) dates
back to a 1943 London Rotary conference that promoted
international cultural and educational exchanges. Attended by
ministers of education and observers from around the world, and
chaired by a past president of RI, the conference was an impetus
to the establishment of UNESCO in 1946.
An endowment fund, set up by Rotarians
in 1917 "for doing good in the world," became a not-for-profit
corporation known as
The Rotary
Foundation in 1928. Upon the death of Paul Harris in 1947, an
outpouring of Rotarian donations made in his honor, totaling US$2
million, launched the Foundation's first program — graduate
fellowships, now called
Ambassadorial Scholarships. Today, contributions to The Rotary
Foundation total more than US$80 million annually and support a
wide range of
humanitarian grants and
educational programs that enable Rotarians to bring hope and
promote international understanding throughout the world.
In 1985, Rotary made a historic
commitment to immunize all of the world's children against polio.
Working in partnership with nongovernmental organizations and
national governments thorough its
PolioPlus program, Rotary is the largest private-sector
contributor to the global polio eradication campaign. Rotarians
have mobilized hundreds of thousands of PolioPlus volunteers and
have immunized more than one billion children worldwide. By the
2005 target date for certification of a polio-free world, Rotary
will have contributed half a billion dollars to the cause.
As it approached the dawn of the 21st
century, Rotary worked to meet the changing needs of society,
expanding its service effort to address such pressing issues as
environmental degradation, illiteracy, world hunger, and children
at risk. The organization
admitted women for the first time (worldwide) in 1989 and
claims more than 90,000 women in its ranks today. Following the
collapse of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet
Union, Rotary clubs were formed or re-established throughout
Central and Eastern Europe. Today, 1.2 million Rotarians belong to
some 31,000 Rotary clubs in 166 countries.
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