Secretary's Column

Over the next few weeks I will be showing some excerpts out of the new Rotary Basics booklet from Rotary International. I hope these articles will help enrich your participation in Rotary.

The entire booklet is available as PDF file just download it from RI here.

-- Jim Welborne
--------------------------------Excerpt 2 -The Organization
of Rotary
Rotary is essentially a grass-roots organization, with most of its service efforts being carried
out at the club level. The district and international structure is designed to support the clubs and help them provide more service in their local commun-ities and abroad.
Clubs Rotarians are members of Rotary clubs, which belong to the global association Rotary International (RI). Each club elects its own officers and en-joys considerable autonomy within the framework of Ro-tary’s constitution and bylaws.
Districts Clubs are grouped into 531 RI districts, each led by a district governor, who is an officer of RI. The district admin-istration, including assistant governors and various com-mittees, guides and supports the clubs.
RI Board The 19-member RI Board of Directors, which in-cludes the RI president and
president-elect, meets quarterly to establish policies. Traditionally, the RI president, who is elected annually, devel-ops a theme and service em-phases for the year.
The Secretariat Rotary Inter-national is headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Evans-ton, Illinois, USA, with seven
international offices in Argen-tina, Australia,Brazil, India, Japan, Korea, and Switzerland.
The office for RI in Great Britain and Ireland (RIBI), located in England, serves clubs and
districts in that region. The Secretariat’s chief operating officer is the RI general secre-tary, who heads a 740-member staff working to serve Rotarians worldwide.