Are you an established professional who wants to make positive changes in your community and the world?
Our club members are dedicated people who share a passion for community service and friendship. Becoming a Rotarian connects you with a diverse group who share your drive to give back.
Our 1.2 million-member organization started with the vision of one man—Paul P. Harris. The Chicago attorney formed one of the world’s first service organizations, the Rotary Club of Chicago, on 23 February 1905 as a place where professionals with diverse backgrounds could exchange ideas and form meaningful, lifelong friendships. Rotary’s name came from the group’s early practice of rotating meetings among the offices of each member.
You are invited to visit us at an upcoming meeting.
Participation in this year’s World Polio Day live-streamed event continued the growth registered since it began in 2014.
Rotary, the world’s leading advocacy organization on polio eradication, held this year’s program on 24 October at the headquarters of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The event brought some of the biggest names in the campaign together to highlight the progress that has been made and to discuss what further action is needed to end the disease for good.
Every hero has an origin story. “I was 10 years old when the entire journey started,” explains Binish Desai. It began with a cartoon called Captain Planet, an animated TV series from the 1990s about an environmentalist with superpowers. Desai can still recite the show’s refrain: Captain Planet, he’s our hero / Gonna take pollution down to zero! “That tagline stuck in my mind,” he says. “I wanted to do something to help Captain Planet.”
Binish Desai began working on an eco-friendly brick made out of recycling and waste, when he was 11. The former Rotary Youth Exchange student, inventor, and entrepreneur credits Rotary with giving him the support to pursue his dreams. Now he’s giving back through a new Rotary club.
by Geoffrey Johnson | photography by Chaitali Mitra
