The power of Rotary: Doing good across the world

Rotary International is the world's first and largest service organisation. Founded 110 years ago, the Rotary Mission is to create positive, lasting change within local communities around the world. The purpose being to bring together business and professional leaders to provide humanitarian services, encourage high ethical standards and help build goodwill and peace in the world. Coming together from diverse cultures and occupations, it is the shared passion for service that helps the Rotarian accomplish the extraordinary.

Rotarians understand that each community has its own unique needs and concerns, thus helping clubs focus their service efforts in promoting peace, fighting disease, providing clean water, saving mothers and children, supporting education, growing local economies and developing human resources.

The guiding principle of Rotary over the past 100 years has been the foundation upon which Rotary values and traditions stand - Service, Fellowship, Diversity, Integrity, and Leadership.

In Sri Lanka Rotary was established in 1929. Today there are 73 Rotary clubs with 2000 members.

Originally a part of Rotary India, Sri Lanka broke away in 1991 to establish its own district. Today Sri Lanka can proudly say that at the helm of Rotary International is President K. R. Ravindran, driving the good work of Rotary through 34,000 clubs in 200 countries with 1.2 million Rotarians across the world. It was under his leadership as the National Polio Plus Chair, in association with the government of Sri Lanka, and UNICEF that Sri Lanka was declared polio free in 1995 and remains so, to date. This was a US$ 1.5 million project.

Major projects that Rotary International has done throughout the world include Cornea transplant surgeries in India; providing temporary shelters in Nepal following the horrendous Gorkha earthquake; providing food for the poor communities in the US; and in Germany, initiating a programme for young people to enhance their social values and skills.

In Sri Lanka major projects implemented by Rotary include the establishment of the Ceylon National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis (CNAPT) ; the establishment of the Sri Lanka Anti Narcotic Association (SLANA); The Center for Handicapped at

Peradeniya; a hearing care project that provided improvement to the ENT clinic at the General Hospital; rebuilding 25 Tsunami devastated schools in the south eastern region;

a cancer prevention and early detection centre in association with the Ministry of Health and the development of a fully modernised wing for neonatal intensive care at the Maha Modara hospital in Galle.

Today Rotary International is perceived as an organisation that creates and nurtures leaders who have come together to create positive, lasting change in villages, towns, and cities around the world. It has a permanent place with the United Nations and partner's international organisations to eliminate such challenges as poverty, illiteracy and malnutrition with sustainable solutions that leave a lasting impact.

(The writer is Secretary, Rotary Club of Colombo- 2014)