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.
Rotary Facts
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Rotary was formed in 1905 by the vision of one man, Paul Harris, who was an attorney in Chicago, USA.
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Rotary is an international service organization, bringing together people from all around the world in order to provide humanitarian service and to advance goodwill and peace around the world.
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Rotary has over 36,350 member clubs worldwide, with a membership of 1.2 million individuals, known as Rotarians.
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Rotary club of Calcutta became the first Rotary club chartered in India in 1920. Today there are close to 4,025 clubs with more than 155,000 members. ​
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Rotary is the world's first service club. The first Rotary club was founded in Chicago, Illinois, USA, on February 23, 1905.
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Rotarians meet weekly for fellowship and interesting and informative programs dealing with topics of local and global importance. Membership is by invitation, and reflects a wide cross-section of community representation.
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Rotarians plan and carry out a remarkable variety of humanitarian, education and cultural exchange programs that touch people's lives in their local communities and world community.
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Polio Plus program is Rotary's commitment to work with national and international health organizations on the goal of polio eradication . More than 2.5 billion children in the developing nations have been immunized against polio through Polio Plus grants. We are almost there. Only one strain left.
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The Rotary Foundation transforms your gifts into service projects that change lives both close to home and around the world.Since it was founded more than 100 years ago, the Foundation has spent more than $4 billion on life-changing, sustainable projects.
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Rotary Leaders
Shekhar Mehta
President 2021-22
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Shekhar Mehta, of the Rotary Club of Calcutta-Mahanagar, West Bengal, India, is the President of Rotary International for 2021-22. Mehta acknowledges that current membership trends are a challenge and says that membership development should be Rotary’s highest priority. He believes that focusing on regional plans, successfully transitioning Rotaractors into Rotary clubs, and increasing diversity and female members could yield a 5 percent net growth in membership each year.
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Jennifer Jones
President 2022-23
Jennifer E. Jones, a member of the Rotary Club of Windsor-Roseland, Ontario, Canada, will become Rotary International’s president for 2022-23, a groundbreaking selection that will make her the first woman to hold that office in the organization’s 115-year history.
As the first woman to be nominated to be president, Jones understands how important it is to follow through on Rotary’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Statement. “I believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion … begins at the top and for us to realize growth in female membership and members under the age of forty — these demographics need to see their own reflection in leadership,” Jones said. “I will champion double-digit growth in both categories while never losing sight of our entire family.”
Mission
We provide service to others, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through our fellowship of business, professional, and community leaders.
What we do
Rotarians believe that we have a shared responsibility to take action on our world’s most persistent issues. Our area of focus includes :
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Promote peace
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Fight disease
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Provide clean water, sanitation, and hygiene
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Save mothers and children
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Support education
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Grow local economies
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Support the environment
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