About Rotary

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Rotary International is an international service organization whose stated purpose is to bring together business and professional leaders in order to provide humanitarian services, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and help build goodwill and peace in the world. It is a secular organization open to all persons regardless of race, colour, creed, religion, gender, or political preference. There are 34,282 clubs and over 1.2 million members worldwide.[1] The members of Rotary Clubs are known as Rotarians. Members usually meet weekly for breakfast, lunch or dinner, which is a social event as well as an opportunity to organize work on their service goals.

Rotary's primary motto is "Service above Self"; an earlier motto, "One profits most who serves best".[

 

Motto

 Service above Self

Formation

 1905; 115 years ago

Type

Service club

Headquarters

Evanston, Illinois,United States

Location

Global

Membership

1.22 million

Official language

English, Swedish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Korean, Tamil and Japanese.

President

Holgar Knaack (2020–21)

Key people

Paul P. Harris(Founder)

Website

www.rotary.org

 

Philosophy

The object of Rotary is to encourage & foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster:[3]

1.   The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;

2.   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;

3.   The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian's personal, business, and community life;

4.   The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.

This objective is set against the "Rotary 4-way Test", used to see if a planned action is compatible with the Rotarian spirit. The test was developed by Rotarian and entrepreneur Herbert J. Taylor during the Great Depression as a set of guidelines for restoring faltering businesses and was adopted as the standard of ethics by Rotary in 1942. It is still seen as a standard for ethics in business management:[4]

The 4-Way Test considers the following questions in respect to thinking, saying or doing:

·         Is it the truth?

·         Is it fair to all concerned?

·         Will it build goodwill and better friendships?

·         Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

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