What is Rotary?
Rotary is a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders that provides humanitarian service, encourages high ethical standards in all vocations, and helps build goodwill and peace in the world. Approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 32,000 Rotary clubs located in 200+ countries.
Rotary club membership represents a cross-section of the community's business and professional men and women. The world's Rotary clubs meet weekly and are non-political, non-religious, and open to all cultures, races, and creeds.
Object of Rotary
The main objective of Rotary is service - in the community, in the workplace, and throughout the world. Rotarians develop community service projects that address many of today's most critical issues, such as children at risk, poverty and hunger, the environment, illiteracy, and violence. They also support programs for youth, educational opportunities and international exchanges for students, teachers, and other professionals, and vocational and career development. The Rotary motto is Service Above Self.
In summary, 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:
FIRST. The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;
SECOND. High ethical standards in business and professions, the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the dignifying of each Rotarian's occupation as an opportunity to serve society;
THIRD. The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian's personal, business, and community life;
FOURTH. The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.
In 1985, Rotary launched the PolioPlus program to protect children worldwide from the cruel and fatal consequences of polio. In 1988, the World Health Assembly challenged the world to eradicate polio. Since that time, Rotary's efforts and those of partner agencies, including the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and governments around the world, have achieved a 99 percent reduction in the number of polio cases worldwide.
Throughout the late 20th century, Rotary International's service program has adapted to the times. Rotary began to address the pressing global issues of environmental degradation with the formation of the Preserve Planet Earth program in 1990. Other programs were formed to address illiteracy, drug abuse, and the needs of both an aging population and the increasing number of children at risk.
Rotary International (RI) web-site: www.rotary.org
Rotary and the United Nations
In a farewell address on 11 December, 2007, outgoing United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan cited Rotary International as an example of a private organization or nonstate actor whose partnership with public agencies helps achieve major social goals.
More than 40 Rotarians served as advisers, consultants, and delegates at the UN charter conference in 1945. Rotary and the UN have enjoyed a close relationship ever since, with Rotary currently represented at the UN by 23 Rotarians. Rotary also has high-level nongovernmental organization consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council, which oversees many specialized UN agencies. In addition, Rotary has its own day at the UN, marked by panel discussions to pinpoint new opportunities for the two organizations to work together.
Peter Wong
