Rotary's Guiding Principles
Posted by Bill Molesworth
Doug Ewan presented another in his series of talks designed to make the Club more aware of the many facets of Rotary. This week, he focused on the Guiding Principles.
Doug recommended that every member check out the website. There's a great quantity of information which is interesting and which gives members an opportunity to go back to the roots of Rotary while finding out what's going on now.
The 4 Principles are: the Object of Rotary; the Classification Principle; the Four Way Test; and the Avenues of Service.
The 4 Way Test was developed by Herbert Taylor as part of a business turnaround effort he was involved in in 1932. It was adopted by Rotary in 1943.
The 4 Avenues of service are Community, Vocational, International and Club.
The Rotary Website has discussion forums, offers downloads, has material to contribute to on-line training, lists updates and highlights and much else. It gets 7 million hits a year and has over 10 million downloads in 9 languages.
There are 5 activity links; making contributions, shopping, listing Club locations, offering discussion rooms and providing contact information.
The whole site is divided into 10 sections - about Rotary, Membership, the Foundation, RI Programes (which is itself divided into 9 different structures), a Newsroom, a list of Events, Club and District support, Training and Downloads. Our club number is 4552 and our district number is 7010 if you want to go on-line.
Doug said he is working on presenting a program of info about Rotary on a monthly basis, but it's hard because he has to do all the copying from the site by himself.
He reminded members that they can do make-ups on-line.
Fred Hacker thought it might help to have more current information about ourselves as well. He said once a member has given a classification talk, we quite often don't hear much more from them. He asked about mini-classifications - a brief talk from a member as part of every meeting. The idea was very positively received. Doug has already sent out an e-mail explaining it and it will start next week.
Ralph said that though he did not find the material presented especially involving, he thanked Doug for doing it and said it was necessary and useful for us all to be reminded of these things and to be aware of the importance and scale of Rotary.
The 4 Principles are: the Object of Rotary; the Classification Principle; the Four Way Test; and the Avenues of Service.
The 4 Way Test was developed by Herbert Taylor as part of a business turnaround effort he was involved in in 1932. It was adopted by Rotary in 1943.
The 4 Avenues of service are Community, Vocational, International and Club.
The Rotary Website has discussion forums, offers downloads, has material to contribute to on-line training, lists updates and highlights and much else. It gets 7 million hits a year and has over 10 million downloads in 9 languages.
There are 5 activity links; making contributions, shopping, listing Club locations, offering discussion rooms and providing contact information.
The whole site is divided into 10 sections - about Rotary, Membership, the Foundation, RI Programes (which is itself divided into 9 different structures), a Newsroom, a list of Events, Club and District support, Training and Downloads. Our club number is 4552 and our district number is 7010 if you want to go on-line.
Doug said he is working on presenting a program of info about Rotary on a monthly basis, but it's hard because he has to do all the copying from the site by himself.
He reminded members that they can do make-ups on-line.
Fred Hacker thought it might help to have more current information about ourselves as well. He said once a member has given a classification talk, we quite often don't hear much more from them. He asked about mini-classifications - a brief talk from a member as part of every meeting. The idea was very positively received. Doug has already sent out an e-mail explaining it and it will start next week.
Ralph said that though he did not find the material presented especially involving, he thanked Doug for doing it and said it was necessary and useful for us all to be reminded of these things and to be aware of the importance and scale of Rotary.