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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. Rotary has contributed more than US$600 million to the polio
eradication activities in 122 countries.
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.
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