Rotary at a Glance

Rotary International is a service organization that joins leaders from all continents, cultures and occupations to exchange ideas and take action for communities around the world. Through fellowship and global understanding, we build life-long relationships. We honor our commitments with ethics and integrity. Through diversity, we connect different perspectives. And through vocational expertise, service and leadership, we solve social issues.
 
Rotarians are people of action. We volunteer our time and talents, provide funds, develop partnerships, and invest in the next generation of leaders. Each individual club has the opportunity to discuss the greatest challenges and needs of its own community and communities throughout the world, and works to develop ideas on how to solve these issues.

Membership Snapshot

Who:
Rotary International brings together the kind of people who step forward to take on important issues for communities worldwide. Rotary members hail from a wide range of professional backgrounds: doctors, artists, executives, small business owners and stay-at-home parents all call themselves Rotarians. Rotary connects these unique perspectives, and helps leverage its members’ expertise to improve lives everywhere.
 
What:
Rotarians contribute their time, energy and passion to sustainable, long-term projects in local communities across the globe. Projects focus on important issues like peace and conflict resolution, disease prevention and treatment, water and sanitation, maternal and child health, basic education and literacy and economic and community development.
 
Where:
From Haiti and Greenland to Nigeria and Singapore, Rotary unites a truly diverse set of leaders from across the world. Currently, the largest number of clubs comes from the United States, India, Japan and Brazil. The fastest growing Rotary regions include Southeast Asia and Africa.

Polio Eradication

Rotary International is close to eliminating the second human disease in history after smallpox, with a 99 percent reduction in polio cases worldwide since 1985, when Rotary launched its PolioPlus program. In 1988, Rotary spearheaded the creation of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative with its partners the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Polio eradication remains Rotary’s top priority. To date, Rotary has contributed more than US$1.2 billion and countless volunteer hours to help immunize more than two billion children against polio in 122 countries. Currently, Rotary is working to raise $35 million per year through 2018 for polio eradication, which will be matched 2 to 1 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.