Rotary- 105 Years of Extraordinary "Service Above Self"

Rotary, the first and largest international service organization, founded in 1905, is the worldwide association of 33,000 Rotary clubs in 200 countries and territories united under the motto of "Service Above Self". The 1.25 million men and women known as Rotarians represent a cross-section of business, professional, and community leaders around the world. Rotary club members volunteer their expertise, time, and money to support local and international projects that help people in need and promote understanding and peace among cultures. The Rotary Foundation, Rotary’s philanthropic arm, awards approximately US$ 165 million each year in grants for Rotarian-sponsored humanitarian projects, scholarships, and vocational training teams.

Rotary has formed strategic partnerships with a variety of organizations, including nongovernmental organizations, foundations, corporations, and universities. Together they provide funding, technical expertise, and advocacy support to address global challenges in one or more of Rotaries six Core Areas of focus (Number of Rotary grants and funding over the past five years, 2004-2009):

• Peace and conflict prevention/resolution (434 fellowships awarded; $20,460,000)
• Disease prevention and treatment (2,718 grants awarded; $34,189,400 -not including
PolioPlus)
• Maternal and child health care (527 grants awarded; $7,172,184)
• Water and sanitation (2,436 grants awarded; $30,484,779)
• Basic education and literacy (2,664 grants awarded; $28,008,087)
• Economic and community development (1,625 grants awarded; $24,498,464)

Rotary is an exceptionally cost effective organization with very low overhead costs. Charity Navigator, an independent charity evaluator, has placed Rotary third in a list of "10 of the Best Charities Everyone's Heard Of" - 90.8% of every dollar raised goes directly into the vast array of Rotary sustainable humanitarian, educational, health, peace and conflict resolution, economic development, polio eradication and other programs.

Rotary has been named one of the top five NGOs for corporate partnerships by the Financial Times in 2007. Rotary was the recipient of the 2007 United Nations Association Humanitarian Award, in recognition of Rotary’s significant efforts to provide safe water and sanitation and its commitment to sustainable development worldwide. Rotary also received the 2008 U.S. Congress Open World National Grantee of Merit Award. The extraordinary contributions toward alleviating human suffering by Rotary over the past 105 years are legendary. A sampler of the tens of thousands of such projects are provided in six interrelated Core Areas- Rotary's program emphases.

CORE AREA: Peace and Conflict Prevention and Resolution. Rotary’s educational and cultural exchange programs have been promoting international understanding for decades. In addition, seven Rotary Centers for International Studies in peace and conflict resolution operate in eight prestigious universities worldwide. This program offers graduate-level and professional development fellowships, where Rotary Peace Fellows study such topics as international relations, public administration, sustainable development, and conflict resolution.

Rotary Peace Fellows are leaders promoting national and international cooperation, peace, and the successful resolution of conflict throughout their lives, in their careers, and through service activities. Fellows can earn either a master’s degree in international relations, public administration, sustainable development, peace studies, conflict resolution, or a related field, or a professional development certificate in peace and conflict resolution. “Rotary Peace Fellows believe, and I believe, it is possible to have a world without war. It is possible to have a world without hunger.” Archbishop Emeritus and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, stated in his keynote speech to 86 Rotary World Peace Fellows at the second Rotary World Peace Symposium in Birmingham (UK), in June 2009.

CORE AREA: Disease Prevention and Treatment.

“We face multiple crises. We can either cut back on health expenditures. and incur massive losses in lives and capacity for growth, or we can invest in health and spare both people and economies the high cost of inaction. The choice should be clear.”- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking at the 2009 RI Convention.

Launched in 1985, Rotary’s corporate project, global polio eradication (PolioPlus), provides a model for successful public-private partnerships. Together with the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rotary is a spearheading partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. In addition to contributing an anticipated $1.2 billion for this effort, Rotary club members have provided an army of volunteers on the ground to promote and carry out mass polio immunization efforts. Rotary clubs also sponsor projects that target malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other preventable diseases.

“In polio circles, Rotary is famous for its steadfast commitment, its hard-nosed determination. Rotary brought the advantage of a unique business-model approach to the many problems that face any health initiative, and especially one of this scale.” — Dr. Margaret Chan, World Health Organization Director-General

To date, the PolioPlus program has contributed $600 million for the protection of 2.2 billion children in 122 countries. Today there are four countries are not certified polio free - Nigeria, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Rotary and its partners are making the final push to completely eradicate Polio. The funds raised by Rotarians around the world, in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are providing the much needed polio vaccine, operational support, medical personnel, laboratory equipment, and educational materials for health workers and parents.

Since 1995, donor governments have contributed in excess of $2.6 billion to polio eradication, due in large part to Rotary’s advocacy efforts. This amount, combined with direct funds from Rotary, is more than half the money needed for the entire global polio eradication program. Countries including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States of America are now major financial donors to this historic health initiative.

“In the world of global health, success builds on success, and Rotary, in its commitment to eliminate polio, is unique. Rotary has taken a very strong leadership role, and we knew, based on Rotary’s track record, that they would obviously be the key partner.” — Bill Gates, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair

Rotary has helped broker peace initiatives to enable immunization drives. In 2001 Rotary negotiated a cease-fire with the opposing parties in Burundi, known as the “Days of Tranquility” to enable National Immunization Days (NIDs) in that war torn nation. This campaign was a major step in the global effort to eradicate this crippling disease. These "Days of Tranquility" have been observed in many other conflict countries, particularly the immunization campaigns in several central African countries, including the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). President Joseph Kabil, of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was joined in Kinshasa by the Minister of Health and other senior representative of the Congo, with the Director- General of WHO, the UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa, and the Past President of RI, Carlo Ravizza, at a special ceremony launching the NIDs. More than 15 million children under five were immunized in this region, including 3.6 million in Angola, over 600,000 in the Congo (Brazzaville), 11.5 million in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and over 200,000 in Gabon. Since that time, Rotary and its partners have carried out NIDs in other war zones, including the Afghanistan "Days of Tranquility."

CORE AREA: Maternal and Child Health Care. In addition to immunizing millions of children against polio, Rotary supports projects to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV and to provide health education and medical care to impoverished women and girls. Other projects focus on nutrition and prenatal care, along with the provision of vitamin A, insecticide-treated bed nets, and other relatively low-cost measures for promoting good health.

Reducing child mortality was the main focus of Past RI President Dong Kurn Lee’s emphases in 2008-9. More than 10 million children die every year from preventable causes, and 530,000 women die of pregnancy-related causes. Pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, and measles account for the majority of deaths of children under the age of five, but malnutrition is often in the background. "When I first asked Rotarians to focus on reducing the rate of child mortality, I was confident that we would be able to make a difference. The way Rotarians responded has exceeded even my own hopes. Our projects are saving lives, one at a time, with determination and with success" said President Lee.

Rotary has trained Nepalese women as midwives because in mountainous Nepal, infant mortality is most severe in remote Himalayan villages — areas that are also in short supply of family planning services and economic opportunities. Rotarians have created an extensive training program to bring much needed prenatal and postnatal services to 10 remote regions. The project, a collaboration between the Rotary clubs of Kathmandu Mid-Town and Darmstadt-Bergstrasse, Germany, is supported by a $283,725 Health, Hunger and Humanity (3-H) Grant from The Rotary Foundation. The program is training 52 young women as professional auxiliary nurse midwives and includes on-the-job training at hospitals in Baeda and Kathmandu. Grants from the United Nations Population Fund and the World Bank’s Poverty Alleviation Fund are also helping with tuition expenses. After completing their training, the new midwives will be eligible for microcredit loans to start clinics in their hometowns where, in addition to providing care, they can educate women and girls in the community about the problems related to early marriages and pregnancies, and the benefits of child spacing. “This project is unique because it emphasizes the linkage between micro-credit, maternal health, and family planning,” says Hartmut Bauder, project coordinator and past president of the Kathmandu Mid-Town Rotary club.

CORE AREA: Water and Sanitation. The United Nations Association of New York honored Rotary with its 2007 Humanitarian Award in recognition of Rotary’s significant efforts to provide safe water and sanitation and its commitment to sustainable development worldwide.

"In the years since Rotary International has started focusing on water as one of its annual service emphases we have learned just how much can be accomplished with relatively little, how a single small water project, perhaps a pump or a filter, can change the life of a community," said Rotary Past President Wilfrid Wilkinson at the awards ceremony. "However, our work has also included participation in many other major water projects."

Providing greater access to clean water and sanitation facilities is a goal for many Rotary clubs. Their projects span a wide range -- from digging wells to building latrines to providing purifying filters to individual households. Rotary has joined with USAID in this area. “Through this important collaboration, the service ethic and commitment of hundreds of thousands of Rotarians around the world will be joined with the global development expertise and technical leadership of USAID to yield a significant, sustainable increase in water supply and sanitation coverage for the planet’s poorest and most vulnerable populations,” said USAID Chief Operating Officer Alonzo Fulgham. The $150 million dollars donated by Rotary to the alliance will develop its inaugural projects in Ghana, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic, where Rotary districts and USAID missions have the demonstrated ability to carry out effective water and sanitation projects.

CORE AREA: Basic Education and Literacy. Rotary clubs have long been working to promote literacy and expand basic educational opportunities. Rotary’s flagship literacy project, concentrated language encounter (CLE), is a revolutionary teaching method developed by Rotary club members and implemented by clubs in many developing countries. Rotary clubs collect books for shipment to developing countries, distribute dictionaries to schoolchildren, and conduct tutoring programs in local schools.

“For those of us who have been lucky enough to learn to read and to write, for those of us who have benefited from an education and have had the opportunity to avoid a life in poverty: We can all be literacy champions” said David Fowler, Rotary International Literacy Resource Group Chairman. In 2006 country music star Dolly Parton and Rotary announced a cooperative relationship to begin a new chapter in promoting early childhood literacy and lifelong love of books. Under the agreement, Rotary clubs in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States are encouraged to support the Dollywood Foundation’s Imagination Library, which provides a book each month to children from birth until age five. Local Rotary club participation includes promoting the program within the community, helping to identify and register children, and paying for the books and mailings. More than 300 Rotary clubs participated in 2008-09. Today over 450,000 children receive books from the Imagination Library every month. Over 15 million books have been donated to the library since the program started.

Citing its impressive role in the polio eradication effort, Parton said she is proud to work with Rotary on the project. “This partnership is a marriage made in heaven,” Parton says. “Rotary does such good work around the world. This is a big deal for us. We feel proud and honored to be working with such a prestigious organization.” Parton’s impoverished childhood and her father’s illiteracy inspired the country singer to create a literacy program for preschool children in her native Sevier County, Tennessee. The Imagination Library now serves 47 states, along with parts of Canada and the United Kingdom, and has provided children with more than 15 million books. According to the Dollywood Foundation, preschoolers exposed to reading are more likely to look forward to starting school, do well in class, read at or above grade level, finish high school, and go on to college.

CORE AREA: Economic and Community Development. Helping people help themselves is a cornerstone of Rotary service. Among the club projects currently underway are vocational training programs in sewing, computers, carpentry, and other occupations. Many Rotary clubs sponsor Rotary Community Corps, which are groups of local residents working to improve their communities. “Currently, half the human population is living on less than $2 per day and that, my friends, is something we should be concerned about,” said Deepa Willingham, Rotarian and founder of PACE (Promise of Assurance to Children Everywhere) Universal, speaking at the 2009 Rotary Convention. The Rotary clubs of Muyenga, Uganda, and Genk-Noord, Belgium, launched a multi-year project in 2009 that aims to bring long-term economic stability to the Kasamu-Kyali parish in Uganda’s Mpigi District. Supported by a $250,000 Health, Hunger and Humanity (3-H) Grant from The Rotary Foundation, this project aims to improve the lives of 4,000 villagers by providing treated mosquito nets, water boreholes and pumps, agricultural supplies and livestock, vocational training and equipment, educational materials, and uniforms. [$30.2 million in 3-H and Matching Grants was awarded by The Rotary Foundation in 2008-09, to support international service projects organized and conducted by Rotarians around the world]. Rotary Clubs in Belgium, Luxembourg, France, India, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda are also supporting the project. Additional help is coming from a cadre of Rotary Community Corps (RCC) volunteers, who formed 10 subcommittees, each overseeing a different aspect of the project, including finance, livestock, and water distribution.

In conclusion, the contributions of Rotary over the past 105 years are legendary in alleviating human suffering. Rotary’s established record of achievement is well documented in countries around the world and at the United Nations. Rotary's innovation in program design has been cited by leaders and the international press and its organizational capacity and administrative efficiency is supported in the Annual Reports made available to its members and the public on the Internet and in hard copy. Rotary stands alone among international organizations with its sustainable programs and the long-term impact of its projects