ROTARY IN A NUTSHELL

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

ROTARY is the world's first service club. The first Rotary club was founded in Chicago, Illinois, USA on 23 February 1905.

ROTARY is some 1.2 million service-minded men and women belonging to more than 29,000 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 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$90 million for international scholarships, cultural exchanges, and humanitarian projects large and small that improve the quality of life for millions of people. Rotary is widely regarded as the world's largest private provider of international educational scholarships.

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 billion children in developing nations have been immunized against polio through PolioPlus grants.

The members chose the name Rotary because they rotated club meetings to each member's office each week.

Other early international branches were Cuba in 1916 and India in 1920.

During World War II, and Rotary members took an active part in providing emergency relief to victims of the war. Rotary also contributed to the creation of UNESCO and the UN.

In 1985, Rotary launched its PolioPlus program to immunize all of the world's children against polio.

Other Rotary sponsored organizations include: Rotaract — a service club for young men and women aged 18 to 30 with around 185,000 members in 8,000 clubs in 155 countries; Interact — a service club consisting of more than 239,000 young people aged 14–18 with over 10,700 clubs in 108 countries; and Rotary Community Corps (RCC) — a volunteer organization with an estimated 103,000 non-Rotarian men and women in over 4,400 communities in 68 countries.

The change of the second Rotarian motto in 2004, from "He profits most who serves best" to "They profit most who serve best", 99 years after its foundation, illustrates the move to general acceptance of women members in Rotary.