About Rotary – Rotary Club of Kona Sunrise

What is Rotary?

Rotary International

Rotary is an organization of business and professional leaders united worldwide who provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations, and help build goodwill and peace in the world. In more than 200 countries worldwide, over 1.4 million Rotarians belong to more than 34,000 Rotary clubs.

Rotary club membership represents a cross-section of the community’s business and professional men and women. The world’s Rotary clubs meet weekly and are nonpolitical, nonreligious, and open to all cultures, races, and creeds.

Our Main Objective: Service

The main objective of Rotary is service – in the community, in the workplace, and throughout the world.

Rotarians develop community service projects that address many of today’s most critical issues, such as children at risk, poverty and hunger, the environment, illiteracy, and violence. They also support programs for youth, educational opportunities and international exchanges for students, teachers, and other professionals, and vocational and career development. The Rotary motto is Service Above Self.

Club Service

Promotes fellowship as a path to service, supporting activities that ensure the club's success and goal achievement.

Vocational Service

Fosters ethical standards, dignity, and the value of vocations while serving society and promoting meaningful occupations.

Community Service

Enhances community life, focusing on literacy and helping children while fostering service ideals in all aspects of life.

International Service

Advances global peace and understanding through projects aiding underprivileged families and promoting humanitarian efforts worldwide.

Youth Service

Supports youth through scholarships, exchange programs, Interact Club, and activities enriching the lives of local young people.

End Polio Now

Global Eradication of Polio

Although Rotary clubs develop autonomous service programs, all Rotarians worldwide are united in a campaign for the global eradication of polio.

In the 1980s, Rotarians raised US$240 million to immunize the children of the world. We are ‘this close’ to the certification of a polio-free world, with only a handful of countries still not completed. The PolioPlus program will have contributed more than US$500 million to this cause, supplemented, in no small part, by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of more than $100 million.

In addition to its very successful fund raising efforts, Rotary has provided an army of volunteers to promote and assist at national immunization days in polio-endemic countries around the world…we have been, in other words, the “boots on the ground” that will make the completion of this task possible.