I joined Addison Midday Rotary recently. I was first invited by a woman friend to hear a speaker talk about the Woven Health Clinic in Farmers Branch, a 501(c)(3) community health care clinic that helps uninsured and under-insured adults build healthier, happier and more productive lives. It provides high-quality, integrated care — focused on wellness and disease prevention — that’s accessible, affordable and comprehensive. The speaker was delightful and committed to helping those in need. I attended a few more meetings with great speakers and began to realize the broad range of services Rotary offers. The Addison club has not one or two or three, but ten to twelve service projects every year! This was a group I wanted to be a part of. Its main fundraising project is to sell subscriptions to a service of putting small American flags in members’ yards on patriotic holidays. The money they collect is used to fund service projects all year long. Addison Midday Rotary recently committed to a very large donation for the expansion of Metrocrest Services which specializes in helping families and seniors who are going through a crisis situation stabilize their lives for a brighter future. It offers a wide range of services including emergency financial assistance, financial coaching and education, a food pantry, employment coaching and job readiness, senior services to help seniors age in place and seasonal programs focused on children including holiday gifts and food for the summer. I am proud to be part of such a giving group. Let’s learn more about Rotary International.
According to Wikipedia, Rotary International is an international service organization whose stated purpose is to bring together business and professional leaders in order to provide humanitarian service and to advance goodwill and peace around the world. It is a non-political and non-religious organization. Membership is by invite and based on various social factors. There are over 35,000 member clubs worldwide, with a membership of 1.2 million individuals, known as Rotarians.
History - the first years of the Rotary Club
The first Rotary Club was formed when attorney Paul P. Harris called together a meeting of three business acquaintances in downtown Chicago, at Harris's friend Gustave Loehr's office in the Unity Building on Dearborn Street on February 23, 1905. In addition to Harris and Loehr — a mining engineer and freemason — coal merchant Silvester Schiele and tailor Hiram E. Shorey were the other two who attended this first meeting. The members chose the name Rotary because initially they rotated subsequent weekly club meetings to each other's offices, although within a year, the Chicago club became so large it became necessary to adopt the now-common practice of a regular meeting place.
The next four Rotary Clubs were organized in cities in the western United States, beginning with San Francisco, then Oakland, Seattle and Los Angeles. The National Association of Rotary Clubs in America was formed in 1910. On November 3, 1910, a Rotary club began meeting in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, the beginning of the organization's internationality. On February 22, 1911, the first meeting of the Rotary Club Dublin was held in Dublin, Ireland. This was the first club established outside of North America. In April 1912, Rotary chartered the Winnipeg club, marking the first establishment of an American-style service club outside the United States. To reflect the addition of a club outside of the United States, the name was changed to the International Association of Rotary Clubs in 1912.
In August 1912, the Rotary Club of London received its charter from the Association, marking the first acknowledged Rotary club outside North America. It later became known that the Dublin club in Ireland was organized before the London club, but the Dublin club did not receive its charter until after the London club was chartered. During World War I, Rotary in Britain increased from 9 to 22 clubs, and other early clubs in other nations included those in Cuba in 1916, Philippines in 1919 and India in 1920.
In 1922, the name was changed to Rotary International. From 1923 to 1928, Rotary's office and headquarters were located on E 20th Street — now E Cullerton Street — in the Atwell Building designed by famed Chicago architect, Alfred S. Alschuler. During this same time, the monthly magazine “The Rotarian” was published mere floors below by Atwell Printing and Binding Co. By 1925, Rotary had grown to 200 clubs with more than 20,000 members. During the 1930s there was an expanding conflict in Asia between Japan and China and the fear of a confrontation between Japan and the United States. In hopes of helping resolve these issues, leading Japanese international statesman Prince Iyesato Tokugawa was chosen as the honorary keynote speaker at Rotary's Silver (25th) Anniversary Convention/Celebration held in 1930 in Chicago. He held the influential position of president of Japan's upper house of congress — the Diet — for 30 years. He promoted democratic principles and international goodwill. It was only after his passing in 1940 that Japanese militants were able to push Japan into joining the Axis Powers in WWII.
History – World War II era in Europe
Rotary International has worked with the UN since the UN started in 1945. At that time Rotary was involved in 65 countries. The two organizations shared ideals around promoting peace. Rotary received consultative status at the UN in 1946–47.
During the Third Reich, Rotary Clubs were grouped with Freemasonry as secret societies associated with Jews, and Nazi officials were banned from joining them. This was reversed in July 1933 after appeals, but the club was forced to ban all Jews from membership. This led to several non-Jews quitting in solidarity. In order to survive, the members tried to show their loyalty to the Nazi leadership, inviting government officials and high-standing businesspeople like Hermann Schlosser who was a business manager for Degesch which supplied Zyklon B for use at death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. After 1945, the Rotary club tried to control the damage by preventing members such as Hans Globke and Wolfgang A. Wick from being appointed presidents.
History – from 1945 onward
Rotary clubs in Eastern Europe and communist nations were disbanded by 1945–46, but new Rotary clubs were organized in many other countries, and by the time of the national independence movements in Africa and Asia, the new nations already had Rotary clubs. After the relaxation of government control of community groups in Russia and former Soviet satellite nations, Rotarians were welcomed as club organizers, and clubs were formed in those countries, beginning with the Moscow club in 1990.
In 1985, Rotary launched its PolioPlus program to immunize all of the world's children against polio. As of 2011, Rotary had contributed more than $900 million to the cause, resulting in the immunization of nearly two billion children worldwide.
As of 2006, Rotary had more than 1.2 million members in over 32,000 clubs among 200 countries and geographical areas, making it the most widespread by branches and second largest service club by membership, behind Lions Clubs International. The number of Rotarians has slightly declined in recent years: Between 2002 and 2006, they went from 1,245,000 to 1,223,000 members. North America accounts for 450,000 members, Asia for 300,000, Europe for 250,000, Latin America for 100,000, Oceania for 100,000 and Africa for 30,000.
Female membership
From 1905 until the 1980s, women were not allowed membership in Rotary clubs, although Rotarian spouses, including Paul Harris's wife Jean, were often members of the similar "Inner Wheel" club. Women did play some roles, and Jean Thomson Harris made numerous speeches. Dale Carnegie's biographer Carlos Roberto Bacila describes that in 1955 when women were not permitted to attend Rotary meetings, the Brooklyn Rotary Club made an exception and finally allowed Marilyn Burke, Carnegie's secretary, to accompany him in a lecture inside the Rotary. In 1963, it was noted that the Rotary practice of involving wives in club activities had helped to break down female seclusion in some countries. Clubs such as Rotary were predated by women's service organizations, which started in the United States as early as 1790.
The first Irish clubs discussed admitting women as members in 1912, but the proposal foundered over issues of social class. Gender equity in Rotary moved beyond the theoretical question when in 1976, the Rotary Club of Duarte, California, admitted three women as members. After the club refused to remove the women from membership, Rotary International revoked the club's charter in 1978. The Duarte club filed suit in the California courts, claiming that Rotary Clubs are business establishments subject to regulation under California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on race, gender, religion or ethnic origin. Rotary International then appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The RI attorney argued that "... [the decision] threatens to force us to take in everyone, like a motel." The Duarte Club was not alone in opposing RI leadership; the Seattle-International District club unanimously voted to admit women in 1986. The United States Supreme Court, on May 4, 1987, confirmed the Californian decision supporting women, in the case Board of Directors, Rotary International v. Rotary Club of Duarte. Rotary International then removed the gender requirements from its requirements for club charters, and most clubs in most countries have opted to include women as members of Rotary Clubs. The first female club president to be elected was Sylvia Whitlock of the Rotary Club of Duarte, California in 1987. By 2007, there was a female trustee of Rotary's charitable wing The Rotary Foundation, while female district governors and club presidents were common.
Women currently account for 22% of international Rotary membership. In 2013, Anne L. Matthews, a Rotarian from South Carolina, began her term as the first female vice-president of Rotary International. Also in 2013, Nan McCreadie was appointed as the first female president of Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland. The first woman to join Rotary in Ghana, West Africa was Hilda Danquah (Rotary Club of Cape Coast) in 1992. The first woman president in Ghana was Dr. Naana Agyeman-Mensah in 2001 (Rotary Club of Accra-Airport). Up until 2013, there have been 46 women presidents in the 30 Rotary clubs in Ghana. In 2013, Stella Dongo from Zimbabwe was appointed District Governor for District 9210 (Zimbabwe/Zambia/Malawi/Northern-Mozambique) for the Rotary year 2013–14 making her the first female District Governor in the region. She had previously held the offices of Assistant Governor (2006–08), District Administrator (2008–09) and President of The Rotary Club of Highlands (2005–06). She was also Zimbabwe's Country Coordinator (2009–10). Dongo has been recognized and awarded various District awards including Most Able President for year 2005–06 and Assistant Governor of the year 2006–07 and a Paul Harris Fellow. The first female to be President of Rotary International will be Jennifer E. Jones of the Windsor Roseland Rotary Club in Windsor, Ontario Canada.
The change of the second Rotarian motto in 2004, from "He profits most who serves best" to "They profit most who serve best," 99 years after its foundation, illustrates the move to general acceptance of women members in Rotary.
Racial and sexual orientation diversity
The first Rotary Clubs in Asia were in Manila in the Philippines and Shanghai in China, each in July 1919. Rotary's office in Illinois immediately began encouraging the Rotary Club of Shanghai to recruit Chinese members "believing that when a considerable number of the native business and professional men have been so honored, the Shanghai Club will begin to realize its period of greatest success." As part of considering the application of a club to be chartered in Kolkata — then Calcutta — India in January 1920 and Tokyo, Japan in October 1920, Rotary formally considered the issue of racial restriction in membership and determined that the organization could not allow racial restrictions to the organization's growth. In Rotary's legislative deliberations in June 1921, it was formally determined that racial restrictions would not be permitted. Non-racialism was included in the terms of the standard constitution in 1922 and required to be adopted by all member clubs.
Rotary and other service clubs in the last decade of the 20th century became open to gay members.
PolioPlus
The most notable current global project, PolioPlus, is contributing to the global eradication of polio. Sergio Mulitsch di Palmenberg (1923–1987), Governor of RI District 204 (1984–1985), founder of the RC of Treviglio and Pianura Bergamasca (Italy), was the man who inspired and promoted the RI PolioPlus vaccination campaign. Mulitsch made it possible, shipping the first 500,000 doses of antipolio vaccine to the Philippines at the beginning of 1980. This project later gave rise to the NGO "Nuovi Spazi al Servire" coordinated by Luciano Ravaglia (RC Forlì, Italy). Since beginning the project in 1985, Rotarians have contributed over $850 million and hundreds of thousands of volunteer-hours, leading to the inoculation of more than two billion of the world's children. Inspired by Rotary's commitment, the World Health Organization passed a resolution in 1988 to eradicate polio by 2000. Now a partner in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative with WHO, UNICEF and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rotary is recognized by the United Nations as the key private partner in the eradication effort.
In 2008, Rotary received a $100 million challenge grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Rotary committed to raising $100 million. In January 2009, Bill Gates announced a second challenge grant of $255 million. Rotary again committed to raising another $100 million. In total, Rotary will raise $200 million by June 30, 2012. Together, the Gates Foundation and Rotary have committed $555 million toward the eradication of polio. At the time of the second challenge grant, Bill Gates said:
We know that it's a formidable challenge to eradicate a disease that has killed and crippled children since at least the time of the ancient Egyptians. We don't know exactly when the last child will be affected. But we do have the vaccines to wipe it out. Countries do have the will to deploy all the tools at their disposal. If we all have the fortitude to see this effort through to the end, then we will eradicate polio.
There has been some limited criticism concerning the program for polio eradication. There are some reservations regarding the adaptation capabilities of the virus in some of the oral vaccines, which have been reported to cause infection in populations with low vaccination coverage. As stated by Vaccine Alliance, however, in spite of the limited risk of polio vaccination, it would neither be prudent nor practicable to cease the vaccination program until there is strong evidence that "all wild poliovirus transmission [has been] stopped." In a 2006 speech at the Rotary International Convention, held at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Bruce Cohick stated that polio in all its known wild forms would be eliminated by late 2008, provided efforts in Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India all proceed with their current momentum. As of October 2012, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan still had wild polio, but it had been eliminated in India.
In 2014, polio survivor and Rotarian Ramesh Ferris met with the Dalai Lama to discuss the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. The meeting went viral via a selfie taken by Ferris with the Dalai Lama.
Interact
Interact is Rotary International's service club for young people ages 12 to 18. Interact clubs are sponsored by Rotary clubs which provide support and guidance, but they are self-governing and self-supporting.
Club membership varies greatly. Clubs can be single gender or mixed, large or small. They can draw from the student body of a single school or from two or more schools in the same community, and welcome home-schooled students.
Each year, Interact clubs complete at least two community service projects, one of which furthers international understanding and goodwill. Through these efforts, Interactors develop a network of friendships with local and overseas clubs and learn the importance of:
- Developing leadership skills and personal integrity.
- Demonstrating helpfulness and respect for others.
- Understanding the value of individual responsibility and hard work.
- Advancing international understanding and goodwill.
As one of the most significant and fastest-growing programs of Rotary service, with more than 15,000 clubs in more than 145 countries and geographical areas, Interact has become a worldwide phenomenon. Almost 340,000 young people are involved in Interact. Interact stands for “International Action.”
Rotary Youth Leadership Awards
Rotary Youth Leadership Awards or RYLA is a leadership program coordinated by Rotary Clubs around the globe. Each year, thousands of young people participate in this program. Young people ages 13–30 are sponsored by Rotary Clubs to attend the event run by the club's district committee. Participants are chosen for their leadership potential.
Rotary Clubs and the Rotary District cover all expenses for the participants. The format of the event varies from district to district, but commonly takes the form of a seminar, camp or workshop to discuss leadership skills and to learn those skills through practice. Rotary clubs and districts select participants and facilitate the event's curriculum.
RYLA aims to:
- Demonstrate Rotary's respect and concern for youth.
- Provide an effective training experience for selected youth and potential leaders.
- Encourage leadership of youth by youth.
- Recognize publicly young people who are rendering service to their communities.
Every RYLA program covers the following core topics:
- Fundamentals of leadership.
- Ethics of positive leadership.
- Importance of communication skills in effective leadership.
- Problem-solving and conflict management.
- Rotary's purpose and service to the community.
- Building self-confidence and self-esteem.
- Elements of community and global citizenship.
Rotary Peace Centers
The Rotary Foundation has partnered with eight universities around the world to create the Rotary Centers for International Studies in peace and conflict resolution. The universities included International Christian University (Japan), University of Queensland (Australia), University of Bradford (UK), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US) and Duke University (US). In 2006, a new Rotary Peace Center at Chulalongkorn University (Thailand) began offering a three-month professional development program in peace and conflict studies for mid-level and upper-level professionals. In 2011, the Rotary Peace Center at Uppsala University (Sweden) was established and began offering a two-year master's program in peace and conflict studies.
Up to 100 Rotary Peace Fellows are selected annually to earn either a professional development certificate in peace and conflict studies or a master's degree in a range of disciplines related to peace and security. Each Rotary Peace Center offers a unique curriculum and field-based learning opportunities that examine peace and conflict theory through a variety of different frameworks. The first class graduated in 2004. As with many such university programs in "peace and conflict studies," questions have been raised concerning political bias and controversial grants. The average grant was about $75,000 per fellow for the two-year program and $12,000 per fellow for the three-month certificate program.
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