Rotary
The ROTARY is an association of exponents of the most varied professional activities, who work together worldwide to serve society, encourage respect for high ethical principles in the exercise of each profession and help build a world of friendship and peace.
First in time among the service club associations in the world, ROTARY was founded in Chicago (Illinois, USA) on the evening of February 23, 1905 through the work of a young lawyer Paul Harris and three of his friends.
The ROTARY currently has about 1.2 million members – between men and women – first-ranking exponents in their professional fields and belonging to more than 32,000 Rotary Clubs from almost every nation in the world.
Each ROTARY Club meets regularly once a week to allow members to discuss local and international issues of common interest together. In each club, membership represents a cross-section of the economic life of the community.
The ROTARY clubs organize and implement each of the humanitarian and educational projects in favor of the inhabitants of their own community and of communities of other countries located in the most diverse parts of the world.
ROTARY also means its Rotary Foundation, which every year distributes over 90 million US Dollars in international scholarships, cultural exchanges and humanitarian assistance projects, of various sizes, aimed at improving the quality of life for millions of people. Rotary is widely regarded as the largest private provider of international scholarships.
ROTARY means Polio Plus, a project that demonstrates its commitment to cooperate with other national and international health organizations for the total eradication of infantile paralysis. Thanks to the Polio Plus Grants, it has been possible to vaccinate over a billion children in developing countries to date.
Finally, ROTARY means the Youth Exchange Program and the New Generations Service Exchange, which every year involve more than eight thousand young people from all over the world, who enrich their culture and knowledge through contacts with worlds other than their own.
ROTARY MEANS TO SERVE ABOVE ANY PERSONAL INTEREST
What is Rotary?
“The greatest resource of any nation is its youth. Today’s boys are tomorrow’s men and Rotarians are not allowed to forget their duties towards future generations”.
Following this address of its founder Paul Harris, Rotary has always tried to involve young people in initiatives aimed at contributing to their training, their well-being, their future happiness and their ability to face tomorrow.
This attitude has a particular importance in the current historical moment in which, paradoxically, the technological progress of the last century seems to distance peace rather than bring men closer together. Today’s world shaken by bloody conflicts and terrorist acts motivated by reasons of supremacy, desire for power and conquest, ethnic hatred, incredible religious convictions, arrogance, malice.
In this very serious picture of sick human relationships, the condition of the new generations has become more problematic, disoriented and without clear prospects for the future also due to the situation of global economic crisis which affects not only underdeveloped countries, but the whole world.
Rotary is well aware that to meet the new generations it is necessary to offer them opportunities and means to broaden visions, useful experiences and hopes. With this aim, our Association, since its inception, has carried forward the ambitious project of involving young people in a path of responsibility and trust, through the organization of various programs that constitute the 5th Path of Service Action of Rotary International. Different programs according to age, represented by Interact, Rotaract, RYLA, Youth Exchange and NGSE.
We Rotarians are convinced that with these programs the prerequisites for a future peaceful coexistence in the world can also be built: not a utopia, but a dream that can become reality, because as Nelson Mandela said “something is not feasible until is not done”!
PDG Luciano Di Martino
District 2080 NGSE Chair
