About Rotary - What Is Rotary?

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•  Rotary is one of the largest and most influential international humanitarian service organizations in the world.

• Rotary’s 1.2 million members worldwide belong to more than 33,000 Rotary clubs in more than 200 countries and geographical areas.

• As volunteers, Rotary members have been serving the needs of communities worldwide since 1905.

• Rotary is a global network of business, professional, and community leaders.

• Through volunteer service, the women and men of Rotary build friendships and enlarge their circle of business and professional acquaintances.

• Participating in international service projects allows Rotary members to connect with people from around the world and promote cross-cultural understanding.

• Rotary promotes peace and international understanding through its educational and humanitarian programs.

• Rotary sponsors the largest privately funded international scholarship program in the world. Since 1947, Rotary has contributed roughly $500 million to fund 38,000 students from 100 countries.These cultural ambassadors use the skills they acquire through their studies abroad to help their
  communities.

•  Rotary clubs promote peace by initiating thousands of humanitarian projects every year that address the underlying causes of social instability and conflict — hunger, poverty, disease, and illiteracy.

• Rotary’s top philanthropic goal is to eradicate polio worldwide.

• Since 1985, Rotary members have donated their time and money to help immunize more than two billion children in 122 countries.

• To date, Rotary has contributed more than US$800 million and countless volunteer hours to fighting the disease

• Rotary and its partners have reduced polio cases by 99 percent worldwide.

•  Less than 2,000 cases of polio were reported in 2008, compared with 350,000 cases in 1988.

•  Polio remains endemic in just four countries: Afghanistan, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

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 of service
• High ethical standards in business and professional life, the recognition of worthiness of all useful occupations; and the dignifying of each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society
• The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian’s personal, business and community life.
• The advancement of international understanding goodwill and peace through a world fellowship of persons united in the ideal of service

The principles of service, understanding and goodwill are sustained by the fellowship which a Rotarian enjoys with fellow members is a club, and the mutual understanding and relationship which are shared with fellow Rotarians throughout the World. Rotarians are encouraged to serve individually and as members of their clubs through their vocations and by the application of service to their personal, business and community lives.

Rotary and the Rotary Club exist as corporate bodies for the purpose of inspiring and encouraging the individual Rotarian to apply the principal of service, and studying and recommending specific ways of carrying out that principle.   

Rotary divides its general objective of service into three main avenues

• Clubl Service
• Community and vocational Service
• International Service

The avenues are particular expressions of the same ideal and seek to interest and involve each Rotarian in all three activities.

Club Service is both the objective of fellowship and the machinery by which the relationship between members and the vocational, community and international objectives are fostered.

Fellowship is not an end in itself but is the beginning of a stimulus to the real purpose of service through vocation and through community and international life.