A Brief History
The 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.
