Rotary is a world fellowship of business and professional men and women united in service, helping those in need and working towards world understanding and peace. Rotary has 1.2 million members in 157 countries and 28,500 clubs. In Great Britain and Ireland there are 63,000 members in 1,860 clubs.
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Once someone has been invited to join Rotary they are welcome to visit any Club anywhere in the world. A friend in nearly every city! Clubs work together to link countries.
Each Rotary Club operates autonomously within the Rotary family and selects causes it wishes to support each year and the key to the ethos of all Clubs is fellowship and friendship, a social programme and fun!
Community service is the traditional and well-known face of Rotary. It covers help and advice to all those in need, either directly or through local charitable organisations.
Rotary Clubs focus on community projects (childhood immunisation, literacy) and helping the young and the elderly. Rotary’s flagship programme is its effort to protect children against polio, with the goal of ending the disease throughout the world.
Rotary also supports programmes for youth, educational opportunities and international exchanges for students, teachers, and other professionals, along with vocational and career development.
Rotarians use the motto:
“Service Above Self”
The Object of Rotary
As an organisation which has ‘service’ (i.e. providing help to those that need it) at its core, Rotary’s has a single set of aims. These are:
To encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and in particular to encourage:-
• The development of acquaintance as an opportunity of service.
• High ethical standards in business and professions; the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations; and the dignifying of each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society.
• The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian’s personal business and community life.
• The advancement of international understanding, goodwill and peace through a world of fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service
The Four Way Test
Rotarians aspire to achieving consistently high professional and personal standards of behaviour. To help them achieve the highest moral and ethical standards in their business, community and social undertakings they have a benchmark. It is called the Four Way Test.
• Is it the truth?
• Is it fair to all concerned?
• Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
• Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
Rotary Organisation
Rotary in this country is organised on four levels.
• International Rotary International
• National Rotary in Great Britain and Ireland
• District District 1090
• Club. Rotary Club of Witney
Rotary International is the world movement of Rotary Clubs with headquarters at Evanston, Illinois, USA. and exercises overall control of the organisation. It is responsible for formulating policy and providing administration back up world-wide. It promotes an international programme as well as assisting funding, through Rotary Foundation, Rotary’s own charity, by means of matching grants for projects initiated by individual Rotary Clubs.
Rotary in Great Britain and Ireland (RIBI) is unique in so far as it has its own organisation. While operating under the general umbrella of Rotary International, RIBI has its own secretariat, based at Alcester, Warwickshire, and in many matters retains independence of action.
In RIBI the committee structure is common at all levels, but each club is autonomous, running its own affairs and selecting causes it wishes to support each year.
Our district, District 1090, consists of over 2000 men and women in over 60 Rotary Clubs spanning the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Middlesex and Oxfordshire.
For convenience of administration, the District is divided into six Zones, each with its own District Assistant Governor. Witney is in White Zone.