| 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. In more than 160 countries
worldwide, approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 30,000
Rotary clubs.
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 nonpolitical,
nonreligious, and open to all cultures, races, and creeds.
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.
Although Rotary clubs develop autonomous service
programs, all Rotarians worldwide are united in a campaign for the global
eradication of polio. In the 1980s, Rotarians raised US$240 million to
immunize the children of the world; by 2005, Rotary's centenary year and
the target date for the certification of a polio-free world, the PolioPlus
program will have contributed US$500 million to this cause. In addition,
Rotary has provided an army of volunteers to promote and assist at
national immunization days in polio-endemic countries around the world.
The
Rotary Foundation
of Rotary International is a not-for-profit corporation that promotes
world understanding through international humanitarian service programs
and educational and cultural exchanges. It is supported solely by
voluntary contributions from Rotarians and others who share its vision of
a better world. Since 1947, the Foundation has awarded more than US$1.1
billion in humanitarian and educational grants, which are initiated and
administered by local Rotary clubs and districts.
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| 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.
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