About Rotary....

Rotary is an organization of business and professional leaders united worldwide who provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and help build goodwill and peace in the world. In more than 160 countries worldwide, approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 30,000 Rotary clubs.

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, nonreligious, and open to all cultures, races, and creeds.

The main objective of Rotary is service — 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, and violence. 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 Polio Plus 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.

To find out more about Rotary International, visit www.rotaryinternational.org.

Rotary’s Guiding Principles

Throughout Rotary’s history, several basic principles have been developed to guide Rotarians in achieving the ideal of service and high ethical standards.

Object of Rotary
First formulated in 1910 and adapted throughout the years as Rotary’s mission expanded, the Object of Rotary provides a succinct definition of the organization’s purpose as well as the clubs member’s responsibilities.

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 acquaintances 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 occupations as an opportunity to serve society.

THIRD:     The application of the ideal service in each Rotarian’s personal, business, and community life,

FOURTH:     The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace throughout a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service

Club No. 6685     District 7950     Weymouth, MA     Chartered 1924