What is Rotary?
- Rotary is the largest non-governmental voluntary service in the world.
- Rotary is a service organisation of business and professional leaders, united worldwide to help those in need, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and work towards world understanding and peace.
- Rotary is nearly 1.2 million service minded men and women belonging to over 29,000 Rotary Clubs in 189 countries. Membership is by invitation.
- Rotarians meet weekly to enjoy each others fellowship and discuss ways to serve others.
- Rotary is compassion for the under-privileged, the ill and the disabled, who benefit from over 50,000 Rotary Club service projects in the world each year.
- Rotary runs the biggest non-government scholarships scheme in the world.
- The Rotary Foundation gives more than$32 million every year to education and humanitarian programmes which promote international understanding.
- Rotary began in Chicago in 1905. The world headquarters are in Evanston, Illinois, USA and the Secretariat of Rotary in Great Britain and Ireland (RIBI) is in Alcester, Warwickshire.
A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO ROTARY AND THE ROTARY CLUB OF RUTHERGLEN.
The purpose of this brief paper is to give you some information on Rotary and the Rotary Club Of Rutherglen.
Paul Harris formed the first Rotary Club in Chicago in February 1905. Initially it was a lunchtime meeting of business men who met had lunch listened to a speaker and planned and organised ways of raising funds to help less fortunate people.
It is an organisation that has grown rapidly over those first 100 years and there are now 31,000 clubs in more than 165 countries. As you can imagine projects to help others cover local, national and international issues.
For an organisation of this size and this wide reaching there needs to be support mechanisms at each level and Rotary has this at district, national and international level. For example our district contains clubs from Lanark to Stranraer and from Campbelltown up to Oban. Rotary still likes to think that it is a bottom up organisation rather than a top down one and that the most important point is therefore the local or individual club.
The Object of Rotary was first formulated in 1910 and has been adapted throughout the years as Rotary’s mission expanded. The Object of Rotary provides a succinct definition of the organisation’s purpose as well as each club member’s responsibilities.
The Object of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and in particular to encourage and foster:
The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for 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 fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.
Our Club meets on a Thursday evening at the King’s Park Hotel at 5.30pm for refreshments and the meeting starts at 6pm with a meal. The weekly business should take about 5 – 10 minutes and the week’s speaker should be asked to speak on their subject for about 20 minutes and once the vote of thanks has been given and the meeting closed we should be leaving the hotel about 7.30pm.
Rutherglen Rotary Club currently are involved in the following activities:-
On Monday evenings we take 2 diasabled Scouts to and from their Scout meeting.
During the summer months normally from Easter through to October we take needy families to the Club’s holiday flat in Largs (uplifting the family down there for the return journey).
Also during the summer months 3 or 4 members cut the grasses at Rutherglen Abbeyfield Elderly Care Home.
We host an International Students’ Night.
We hold an old people’s outing to the Cartland Bridge Hotel during the summer.
Fund raising activities are organised by the different committees during the year such as quizzes, book stalls, Christmas Prize Draw, cheese and wines and race nights.
We are presently trialing the paying of a taxi company to uplift 3 people in the Rutherglen area who suffer from dementia problems and take them to and from their care centre.
We are also considering very seriously supporting the Maggie Centre over the next year to employ a full time shadow for the main officer at the Centre. This is needed because of the changing location of the Beatson Oncology Centre and the main officer obviously can’t be two places at the one time. Being able to employ a "shadow" will allow classes and group meetings to continue without leaving a hole at the other location. Obviously this will be a major commitment for the Club as we would not want to stop helping the other causes we try and support.
On an international front Rotary have been huge contributors to the attempts to eradicate Polio from the world. We also helped send aid to the peoples and areas affected by the tsumani. Indeed a regular project for clubs is the filling of emergency aid boxes and tenting so that these kits are stored ready to be sent to anywhere in our world where disaster strikes.
Throughout Rotary, and within the Club everyone is on first name terms and to preserve the rotational and fellowship aspect, we should each try to sit at a different table at each weekly meeting, so that we can enjoy the mix of company and enhance the development of acquaintance-ship into fellowship and friendship.
It is hoped that every new Rotarian will in due course accept chairmanship of each of our principal committees and hopefully, the ultimate position of President. However all that is asked is that he willingly undertakes any task given, and does the best he can.
In order to enjoy the fellowship of the club a high attendance record is desirable. Officially 60% is required but since the absentee, missing the fellowship of the club, is the loser, our club does not rigidly enforce this rule. The aim, however, is not to miss more than three meetings in succession otherwise you loose track of what is going on. Obviously there are provisions for business leaves of absence and of course absence due to illness.
People are invited to become Rotarians because they are recognised as upstanding citizens, able to represent their business, trade or profession but it is appreciated that for all of us, family life comes first, then our commitment to the businesses we represent, all before Rotary.
Rotarians are encouraged to widen their Rotary horizons by taking part if they can in International and District organised activities, such as our annual conference.
Which for our club anyway, is an excellent excuse for a good weekend of fellowship.
Visits to other Clubs can be both enjoyable, provide an opportunity to makeup slipping attendances and provide an opportunity to widen ones perspective of Rotary. Every Rotarian is welcome at any Rotary meeting and the welcome at clubs abroad can often be somewhat overwhelming.
It shows, however, that every Rotarian is more than welcome anywhere that Rotary meets throughout the world.
This gear wheel badge that we wear is an instant introduction to like minded individuals throughout the world and we all wear it with a great sense of pride and responsibility.
I hope this has at least given you a desire to find out more about us and Rotary.
Thanks for taking the time to read it.
Ian C. Wilson President Elect 2006/2007
March 07