A Brief HistoryThe
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 145,000 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 32,000
Rotary clubs in more than 200 countries and geographical areas.
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