Rotary International
How Rotary Ideas is changing the landscape of crowdsourcing
Lina Aurelio and Peter Audino had something the other one wanted. Rotary Ideas helped them find each other.
Aurelio’s club was looking for $3,000 to buy eyeglasses for needy children in the Philippines. Audino’s club, located in the United States, had exactly that much money earmarked for an international service project.
“We searched Rotary Ideas for a project that fit our budget, one we thought would be effective if supported,” says Audino, international projects committee chair for the Rotary Club of Hyannis in Massachusetts. The eye project in the Philippines met their criteria so they…
Howard Buffett wants to end hunger by 2046
Howard Buffett is on deadline. In 2006, his father, U.S. investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett, challenged him to do something great in the world – and gave him $1 billion to do it. So he gave himself 40 years to spend every penny in a bold attempt to end global hunger. After a second stock gift in 2012 and favorable returns, he has about $3 billion now. An Illinois farmer, Buffett spends part of the year in the cab of his tractor and the rest of his time leading the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. He’s barreled headfirst into his task, visiting more than 100 countries to research the…
Peace Corps and Rotary kickoff historic collaboration
In an effort to promote global development and volunteer service, Rotary and Peace Corps have agreed to participate in a one-year pilot program in the Philippines, Thailand, and Togo.
Under the agreement, Rotary clubs and Peace Corps volunteers are encouraged to share their resources and knowledge to boost the impact of development projects in these three countries.
Opportunities for collaboration include supporting community projects, training, networking, and community education. Through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, Rotary clubs can continue to provide small grants to support…
Rotary supports WHO’s recommendations on recent polio transmission
Rotary supports the World Health Organization director-general’s statement that polio is a public health emergency of international concern. Additionally, Rotary echoes WHO’s recommendations for residents and long-term visitors in Pakistan, Cameroon, and Syria and in polio-endemic countries to receive immunizations against the disease before they travel.
This action is a positive step needed to safeguard the remarkable progress the world has made toward ending polio.
With our partners, as well as health ministries, governments, and others, Rotary remains committed to a polio-free world.
Rotary special to a father in failing health
Dave Mars owned a commercial printing company in Los Angeles. He was the one who asked my father to join the Wilshire Rotary club in 1982.
«How did you know Dave Mars?» I ask.
My father mulls over this for a while but doesn’t come up with anything. My stepmother, Jerri, goes back to the filing cabinets in the office off their bedroom and miraculously returns with a handful of small Rotary pamphlets, actual facebooks, each one containing about 30 pages of black and white photographs of the men in the club, along with their names and their jobs. We look through 1982 and, sure enough, there’s…
Water summit urges collaboration to quench world’s thirst
The statistics are staggering. Worldwide, 2.5 billion people have no improved sanitation facilities. More than 783 million people lack access to clean drinking water.
But the message at the World Water Summit held Friday in Sydney was encouraging: Rotary members and their clubs can bring down those numbers through collaborations and partnerships with the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and governments.
«These are scary numbers,» said Jenny Da Rin, assistant secretary for the Health and Environmental Safeguards branch of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. «…
Rotary’s historic climb in Sydney
During Friday’s world record-breaking Sydney Harbour bridge climb, Rotary members raised enough money to protect 240,000 kids from polio.
Despite the physically grueling four-hour trek up and down the bridge’s storied steel arches, the 340 participants kept their good spirits and stood side-by-side waving 278 flags.
«When the helicopters were going around, you just felt like one great big nation,» says Graeme Davies, district governor of the Rotary Club of Kincumber in Australia.
The massive turnout eclipsed Oprah Winfrey’s world-record climb in 2011 when she summited the bridge alongside 315…
Rotary brings the world to Sydney
It may be the start of winter in Sydney, Australia, but things are heating up down under as more than 18,000 Rotary members from over 150 countries arrive for their biggest international event of the year, the Rotary Convention.
The four-day event, held 1-4 June, offers the perfect venue for our members, their families, and friends to experience the global reach of Rotary. Through workshops, special events, and social activities, attendees have the chance to discover and celebrate our members’ diverse backgrounds and exchange ideas for making the world a better place.
«At a convention, for a…
Rotary's work commemorated in stamps
For more than 80 years, countries around the world have honored the work of Rotary with commemorative stamps.
The first appeared in 1931, when Austria created an overprint — a later printing over an officially issued stamp — in honor of the RI Convention in Vienna.
Other RI conventions have been commemorated with stamps, including those held in 1940, in Havana, Cuba; 1961 and 1978, in Tokyo; 1981, in São Paulo, Brazil; and 1987, in Munich, Germany.
For Rotary’s 50th anniversary in 1955, 27 nations issued commemorative stamps. Many featured familiar Rotary imagery such as the gearwheel,…