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About Rotary
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, 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 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 Rotary Foundation
of Rotary International is a not-for-profit corporation that
promotes world understanding through international humanitarian
service programs and educational and cultural exchanges. It
is supported solely by voluntary contributions from Rotarians
and others who share its vision of a better world. Since 1947,
the Foundation has awarded more than US$1.1 billion in humanitarian
and educational grants, which are initiated and administered
by local Rotary clubs and districts.
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