About Rotary.. What Is Rotary?

Bennington Rotary Club is a party of Rotary International. 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 200 countries worldwide, approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 33,000 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.

 

Honoring Our Past
The Words and Wisdom of Paul Harris

Rotary will continue to be charitable, but it can do more than that; let it remove the cause of that which makes charity necessary.
The Rotarian, August 1916

Rotarians partner together on National Immunization Day in Moradabad, India.
Copyright: Rotary Images/Alyce Henson

View more great Rotary Images on Rotary.org

The Main Objective of Rotary is Service

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:

1. The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;
2. 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 service society;
3. The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian's personal, business and community life;
4. The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.
    

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$630 million to immunize the children of the world; by 2007, Rotary's centenary year and the target date for the certification of a polio-free world, the PolioPlus program will have contributed hundreds of millions 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.

Some of the information on this page was gathered from the international rotary website. To learn more about the Rotary Organization you can visit the Rotary International web site