What is Rotary?

  • Rotary is an organization of business and professional leaders united worldwide, who provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and help good will and peace in the world.
  • Rotary is the world’s first service club. The first Rotary club was founded in Chicago, Illinois, USA on February 23, 1905.
  • Rotary is some 1.2 million service-minded men and women belonging to more than 27,000 Rotary clubs in virtually every nation in the world.
  • Rotarians meet weekly for fellowship and interesting and informative programs dealing with topics of local and global importance. Membership is by invitation and reflects a wide cross-section of community representation.
  • Rotarians plan and carry out a remarkable variety of humanitarian, educational, and cultural exchange programs that touch people’s lives in their local communities and our world community
  • Rotary is The Rotary Foundation, which each year provides some US $60 million for international scholarships, cultural exchanges, and humanitarian projects large and small that improve the quality of life for millions of people
  • Rotary is PolioPlus, Rotary’s commitment to work with national and International health organizations on the goal of polio eradication by the year 2005, Rotary’s 100th anniversary. More than one half billion children in developing nations have been immunized against polio through PolioPlus grants.

ROTARY IS SERVICE ABOVE SELF

  • The object of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster:
  • The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;
  • High ethical standard in business and professions the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupation, and the dignifying by each Rotarian of his occupation as an opportunity to serve society;
  • The application of the ideal of service by every Rotarian to his personal, business, and community life;
  • The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.

Rotary clubs provide:

  • Friendships with other managerial and professional leaders in your community
  • Prestige of membership in a worldwide organization
  • Ongoing practical education
  • A networking of people who can help you become more successful
  • Promotion of higher ethical standards in your business or profession
  • Projects to enhance your community
  • Help for communities in countries around the world