History
of Rotary International
The world's first service club, the Rotary Club of Chicago,
Illinois, USA, was formed on February 23, 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.
The founding members of Rotary
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 interest of club members. Rotarians began pooling
their resources and contributing their talents to help 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. A Rotary conference
held in London in 1942 planted the seeds for the development of the
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), and numerous Rotarians have served as consultants to the
United Nations.
The succession of the wheel logo from the beginning to present.
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 again polio.
Working in partnership with nongovernmental organizations and national
governments through 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 that 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 30,000 Rotary Clubs in more than 160 countries.
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