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Rotary is a worldwide organization of business and professional
leaders that provides humanitarian service, encourages high ethical
standards in all vocations, and helps build goodwill and peace in
the world. Approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than
31,000 Rotary clubs located in 166 countries.
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, non religious, and open to all
cultures, races, and creeds.
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in the community, in the workplace, and throughout the world. Rotarians
develop community service projects that address many of today's
most critical issues, such as children at risk,
poverty and hunger, the environment, illiteracy, andviolence. They
also support programs for youth, educational opportunities and international
exchanges for students, teachers, and other professionals, and vocational
and career development. 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 $240
million to immunize the children of the world; by
2005, Rotary's centenary year and the target date for the certification
of a polio-free world, the PolioPlus program will have contributed
US $500 million 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.
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:
- FIRST. The development of acquaintance as an opportunity
for service;
- SECOND. 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 serve society;
- THIRD. The application of the ideal of service in each
Rotarian's personal, business, and community life;
- FOURTH. The advancement of international understanding,
goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and
professional persons united in the ideal of service.
The mission of Rotary International is to support its member clubs
in fulfilling the Object of Rotary by:
* Fostering unity among member clubs;
* Strengthening and expanding Rotary around the world;
* Communicating worldwide the work of Rotary; and
* Providing a system of international administration.
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 Four-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 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 Four-Way Test has been translated
into more than a hundred languages and published in thousands of
ways. It asks the following four questions:
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?"
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