What's Rotary?

 
What do you think Rotary is all about?
Who do you think Rotarians are?
Many people have the idea that Rotary is an elitist, even secret, organization of wealthy business men who seek to do charitable work.
 
Rotary has been around now for more than 100 years, and in the early days that might have been a true perception - but is no longer true.
 
 Firstly, Rotary is now a huge organization - world-wide and represented in more than 130 nations.  There are more than 1,000,000 Rotarians, and they are men and women, of all ages and occupations.
 What unites them is a will to carry out good work in the world's communities - to help those less fortunate.
The fact that they do this through an immense number of individual Rotary Clubs enables Rotary to engage with a wide range of nationalities and socio-economic groups - because practically the only requirements for Rotarians these days are that they should be good at what they do, that they should be ethically sound, and that they have the will to give something of themselves to help others.
 
Although Rotarians work within a consistent Constitution across the world, Rotary Clubs are by and large autonomous and, importantly, each Club has its own personality.
 
We want to tell you about our Club - Somerville Tyabb - because we like to think we have some unusual qualities in our interpretation of Rotary.
  •         We are quite small at present 20 Members only, and we hope to grow that number to 30, an efficient size
  •         We are a low cost Club.  Although we meet weekly the costs associated with meeting are optional and modest
  •         We are informal to a degree that surprises traditionalists.  No ties or Reefer jackets around here, and almost no formal rituals in Club
  •         We are quite hands-on in our project work - quite capable of practical projects - of which we have a long list over the years.
  •         In fact our project performance over the years, for a small Club, is pretty good - if we do say so ourselves.
 
Does that sound like a group that might interest you?
Membership in Rotary Clubs is by invitation, and we are no exception - but if this sounds like you, contact one of the people on this website and whoever that is will invite you to come to a meeting, or a project, and see what you think.