What is Rotary

Our Club Activities

Rotary is an organization of business and professional persons united worldwide who provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations and help build goodwill and peace in the world.

The first Rotary Club was founded by Paul Harris in Chicago in 1905. Today there are over 25,000 clubs with more than 1.2 million members in 152 countries.

The Rotary Foundation each year provides more than $60 million for international scholarships, cultural exchanges and humanitarian projects large and small that improve the lives of millions of people.

Polio Plus is Rotary's major commitment for the complete eradication of polio in the world by the year 2005. More than 500 million children in developing nations have been immunized against polio. 145 countries are now declared polio free with the last case in the Americas in 1991 in Peru.

Rotary activities are divided into four Avenues of Service:

Club Service - providing service to enable the Rotary Club to run efficiently in the spirit of fellowship.

Vocational Service - putting high standards of conduct into practice in the business and professional lives of the Rotarians.

Community Service - Identifying community needs and addressing those needs with service projects.

International Service - working for international understanding and peace by promoting goodwill among all people, engaging in exchanges and supporting humanitarian projects.

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 of service;
• High ethical standards in business and the professions, the recognition of the 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 business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.

The Four-Way Test of the things we think, say or do:

Is it the TRUTH?

Is it FAIR to all concerned?

Will it bring GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS ?

Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?