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Rotary International : Rotary History |
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ROTARY HISTORY |
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Today, Rotary is well known throughout
the world for its dedication to service
and international goodwill. Changing the
world through service, however, was
hardly uppermost in the mind of Paul P.
Harris when he founded the organization
in 1905. Harris, a lawyer in Chicago,
Illinois, USA, had been raised in a
rural village in Vermont. He envisioned
a new kind of club for professionals
that would kindle the fellowship and
friendly spirit he had known in his
youth.
On the evening of 23 February 1905,
Harris invited three friends to a
meeting. Silvester Schiele, a coal
dealer, Hiram Shorey, a merchant tailor,
and Gustavus Loehr, a mining engineer,
gathered with Harris in Loehr's business
office in Room 711 of the Unity Building
in downtown Chicago. They discussed
Harris' idea that business leaders
should meet periodically to enjoy
camaraderie and to enlarge their circle
of business and professional
acquaintances. The club met weekly;
membership was limited to one
representative from each business and
profession. Though the men didn't use
the term Rotary that night, that
gathering is commonly regarded as the
first Rotary club meeting.
As they continued to convene, members
began rotating their meetings among
their places of business, hence the name
Rotary. After enlisting a fifth member,
printer Harry Ruggles, the group was
formally organized as the Rotary Club of
Chicago. The original club emblem, a
wagon wheel design, was the precursor of
the familiar cogwheel emblem now used by
Rotarians worldwide.
By the end of 1905, the club's roster
showed a membership of 30 with Schiele
as president and Ruggles as treasurer.
Paul Harris declined office in the new
club and didn't become its president
until two years later. Club membership
grew, making it difficult to gather in
offices, so the members shifted their
meetings to hotels and restaurants,
where many Rotary club meetings are held
today.
These early "Rotarians" realized that
fellowship and mutual self-interest were
not enough to keep a club of busy
professionals meeting each week.
Reaching out to improve the lives of the
less fortunate proved to be an even more
powerful motivation. The Rotary
commitment to service began in 1907,
when the Rotary Club of Chicago donated
a horse to a preacher. The man's own
horse had died, and because he was too
poor to buy another one, he was unable
to make the rounds of his churches and
parishioners. A few weeks later, the
club constructed Chicago's first public
lavatory. With these inaugural projects,
Rotary became the world's first
service-club organization.
Rotary's popularity began to spread
throughout the USA. The second Rotary
club was chartered in 1908 in San
Francisco, California, with a third club
formed in Oakland, California. Others
soon followed in Seattle, Washington;
Los Angeles, California; and New York,
New York. When the National Association
of Rotary Clubs held its first
convention in 1910, Harris was elected
president.
At the following year's convention,
speakers used the phrases "Service, Not
Self" and "He Profits Most Who Serves
Best," which became the organization's
mottoes. "Service, Not Self," was later
changed to "Service Above Self" and has
since been adopted as Rotary's primary
motto.
In 1910, Rotary became international
with the formation of the Rotary Club of
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Two years
later, the Winnipeg club became the
first Rotary club officially chartered
outside the United States.
By the time Paul Harris ended his term
as president in 1912; Rotary had spread
across the Atlantic, with the formation
of clubs in the British Isles. After his
term, Harris continued his involvement
in Rotary as president-emeritus,
traveling extensively to promote Rotary
both in the US and abroad.
In 1916, witnessing the growing
popularity of the clubs in various
regions worldwide, Rotary set up a
district system. The organization became
truly global? Transcending national
boundaries, race, language, and religion
? as clubs mushroomed throughout Europe,
South and Central America, Australia,
Africa, and Asia. Rotary was represented
on six continents by 1921. To reflect
this worldwide presence, the name Rotary
International was adopted one year
later.
By 1925, Rotary had grown to 200 clubs
with more than 20,000 members. The
organization's distinguished reputation
attracted presidents, prime ministers,
and a host of other luminaries to its
ranks ? among them composer Jean
Sibelius, humanitarian Albert
Schweitzer, author Thomas Mann, and
diplomat Carlos P. Romulo.
During World War II, many clubs were
forced to disband, while others stepped
up their service efforts to provide
emergency relief to victims of the war.
In 1942, looking ahead to the postwar
era, Rotarians called a conference to
explore international educational and
cultural exchange that served as the
inspiration for the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO). Rotary also
played a significant role in the birth
of the United Nations itself, with 50
Rotarians serving as delegates,
advisors, and consultants at the UN
Charter Conference in 1945. "Few there
are who do not recognize the good work
which is done by Rotary clubs throughout
the free world," British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill once declared.
From the earliest days of the
organization, Rotarians were concerned
with promoting high ethical standards in
their professional lives. One of the
world's most widely printed and quoted
statements of business ethics is The
4-Way Test, which was created in 1932 by
Rotarian Herbert J. Taylor (who later
served as RI president) when he was
asked to take charge of a company that
was facing bankruptcy. This 24-word test
of ethics for employees to follow in
their business and professional lives
became the guide for sales, production,
advertising, and all relations with
dealers and customers, and the survival
of the company is credited to this
simple philosophy. Adopted by Rotary in
1943, the 4-Way Test has been translated
into more than a hundred languages and
published in thousands of ways. It asks
the following four questions:
"Of the things we think, say or do:
1. Is it the TRUTH?
2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER
FRIENDSHIPS?
4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all
concerned?"
Rotary Today and Tomorrow
In 1985, Rotary made a historic
commitment to immunize all of the
world's children against polio. Working
in partnership with the World Health
Organization, UNICEF, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, and
national governments, Rotary are the
largest private-sector contributor in
the global polio eradication campaign.
Through its Polio Plus program, Rotary
raised more than US$240 million and will
have contributed half a billion dollars
to the cause by 2005, the target date
for certification of polio eradication
and Rotary's centennial year. Rotarians
have mobilized hundreds of thousands of
Polio Plus volunteers to promote and
carry out national immunization days in
polio-endemic countries, resulting in
the immunization of nearly two billion
children worldwide.
Throughout the late 20th century, Rotary
International's service program has
adapted to the times. Rotary began to
address the pressing global issues of
environmental degradation with the
formation of the Preserve Planet Earth
program in 1990. Other programs were
formed to address illiteracy, drug
abuse, and the needs of both an aging
population and the increasing number of
children at risk.
Reflecting society in 1905, the
organization had been limited to male
members and remained so officially until
1989, when the Council on Legislation,
Rotary's parliament, voted to eliminate
the male-only provision, opening up
membership to qualified women across the
world (though the U.S. women Rotarians
began to appear during the 1986-1987
Rotary year). Today, there are
approximately 145,000 women Rotarians
worldwide, many of them serving in
leadership roles.
Rotary experienced a growth spurt in the
early 1990s when it expanded into former
Soviet bloc countries following the
collapse of the Berlin Wall and the
Soviet Union. Beginning in 1989, clubs
in Central and Eastern Europe that had
been disbanded for more than 50 years
were re-established, and the first
Russian Rotary club was chartered in
1990.
Nearly 100 years after Paul Harris and
his colleagues chartered the club that
would become Rotary International;
Rotarians continue to take pride in
their history. In honor of the club that
first gathered in Room 711, Rotarians
have preserved the room in an extensive
re-creation of the office as it existed
in 1905. For several years, the club
maintained the room as a shrine for
visiting Rotarians. In 1989, when the
Unity Building was scheduled to be
demolished, Rotary's 711 Club carefully
dismantled the office, salvaging the
original interior, including doors and
radiators. In 1993, the Board of
Directors of Rotary International set
aside a permanent home for the restored
Room 711 on the 16th floor of RI World
Headquarters in Evanston, Illinois.
To know More Click… www.rotary.org
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