Rotary 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.

A polio-free world: end in sight for Rotary’s battle to reach the last child

Rotary International and its 10,000 New Zealand members hopes to celebrate its centenary in February 2005 with the news that polio will soon be eradicated worldwide as part of a 20 year Rotary campaign with the World Health Organisation, United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and government agencies.

During the two-decade project, Rotary has supported national and regional polio eradication programmes by providing oral vaccine, social mobilisation and fundraising totalling the equivalent of nearly $NZ1 billion.

The campaign is the largest non-military global enterprise in human history, involving thousands of health workers, millions of volunteers and a $US3 billion price tag.

Rotary volunteers have often worked in difficult and dangerous conditions, hampered by civil wars, cultural and political prejudice against immunisation, harsh climates, and other hostile elements.

In the most highly co-ordinated example of the campaign, 152 million children were immunised in one day as 100,000 Rotarians and their families joined government workers across India in 2000 to administer precious drops of vaccine.

When the global campaign began, 350,000 children a year were being crippled by the disease and 50,000 children died. Last year, fewer than 1000 cases of paralytic polio were reported, as tens of millions more children were immunised.

New Zealand has been free of introduced polio since 1962, but while a single wild virus exists, children everywhere remain at risk and that’s why it’s in everyone’s interest to support its eradication. The New Zealand government has contributed $600,000 toward Rotary’s international efforts against polio.

Most epidemics are now confined to Nigeria (three-quarters of the new cases), Pakistan, and India.

Other History

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 31,000 Rotary clubs in 166 countries.

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