Editor’s Note: The Derby-Shelton Rotary Club recently installed its new president, Shawn Fields, for the 2011 – 2012 year. He follows Diane Stroman as president. Fields wrote this column about the club’s goals and purpose.
While Rotary International is arguably the greatest service organization the world has ever known, many people locally are not familiar with our purpose and goals.
Rotary consists of over 1.2 million members in almost 34,000 clubs worldwide.
Each local club dedicates itself to improving their local community, as well as the larger national and international communities.
Our motto is: “Service Above Self,” which means that we spend time every day thinking about the lot that others have been given in life, and finding ways that we can help others have a better experience through the avenues of health, literacy, peace, and economic growth.
Much of what you need to know about Rotary can be discovered by studying our logo. In general terms, our logo looks like a simple gear. Upon closer inspection, the nuances of our organization become clear.
The basic shape of our logo is a circle, which is perhaps humanity’s earliest symbol of unity. For us it shows the equanimous nature of our group, no one Rotarian stands above the others, as we are all leaders. The spokes leading out from the center of the gear to the outer circle represent our connections to each other. We our interminably linked to our fellow Rotarians and the rest of humanity.
Our fate and their fate is intertwined.
At the center of a gear is the keyway in which an axle would fit to drive the gear. As an axle rotating produces action in a gear, the key to the heart of Rotary is action. We do not just speak of helping others, we take action to do so, and do not stop until we are finished with the accomplishment of our goal.
Each day we strive to meet the universal expectations of our self-imposed Four-Way Test: Truth, Fairness, Friendliness, and Beneficence.
