What is the

The ROTARY International is an association of representatives of the most different professional occupations working together all through the world in order to help society, encourage the respect of lofty, moral principles in the practice of each profession. Moreover, the Rotary club fosters friendship between peoples.

The first among the associations of service clubs in the world, the Rotary Club was born in Chcago (Illinois, USA) on 23 February 1905 by means of a young lawyer, Paul Harris, and of three friends of him. The head office of the Rotary International is in Evanston, Illinois, USA and is supported by branch offices working in 9 Countries in 4 Continents.

The Rotary Club International, at present, has 1.220.543 members, among men and women, who are the most relevant representatives in their own professional fields and who belong to the 31.314 Rotary Clubs of 165 countries in the world.

Each club has a weekly meeting so that the members can discuss together as to things of mutual interest and about a way to be helpful to society.

New members are admitted upon invitation and subsequent authority received by the Club. Each Rotary Club organizes and realizes some humanitarian and educational plans to the advantage of the inhabitants of its own community and of communities of other Countries all over the world, for instance through the Rotary Foundation which lavishes, each year, about 60 milllion US$ including international scolarships, cultural exchanges and, projects for technical and professional assistence.

ROTARY finally means POLIOPLUS, a project which confirms its commitment to cooperate with other organizations in order to eradicate the infantile paralysis by 2005, the year of the hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the Rotary International. Thanks to the PolioPlus aids, over 500.000 children, in the developing countries, have already been vaccinated.

The ROTARY Club supports the Rotaract, an organization including about 7.480 service clubs with 172.000 young members in about 155 countries. Members of the Rotaract are young men and women between the ages of 18 and 30.

The Rotary, furthermore, supports the Interact, an organization with more than 8.780 service clubs (distributed all over 110 countries) for 202.000 children who are of secondary school age.