Rotary is a global network of leaders dedicated to service, ethics, and community impact
As part of Rotary International, we actively support local and global humanitarian initiatives, addressing critical social issues through charity work, educational programs, and community projects.
Rotary Club Moscow International (RCMI) is more than just a service organization — it is a diverse and dynamic community where professionals and leaders come together to make a meaningful impact. As the only English-speaking Rotary Club in Moscow, we foster connections across cultures and industries, united by a shared commitment to service, ethics, and fellowship.
Beyond our charitable activities, RCMI serves as a hub for professional growth, cultural exchange, and meaningful dialogue. Our meetings and events provide a space for networking, mentorship, and leadership development, allowing members to share expertise, inspire change, and build lifelong connections. Through service and collaboration, we embody the Rotary motto:
Service Above Self.
What is Rotary
The Rotary motto is "Service Above Self"
Our club is one of more than 30.000 clubs in the world that offers our members fellowship and a special way to serve the community in which we are living. We are part of the Rotary International, present in 160 countries worldwide. We like to think of us as an open-minded, friendly, informal and international.
Our present members are coming from Armenia, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Serbia, Spain, Russia.
We are delighted to meet new prospective members, guests and visiting Rotarians at our meetings. We love to have fun at our special meetings, we enjoy good food, good story and good fellowship.
Rotary club membership represents a cross-section of the community's business and professional men and women. The world's Rotary clubs meet weekly and are nonpolitical, nonreligious, and open to all cultures, races, and creeds.
The main objective of Rotary is service - in the community, in the workplace, and throughout the world. Rotarians develop community service projects that address many of today's most critical issues, such as children at risk, poverty and hunger, the environment, illiteracy, and violence. They also support programs for youth, educational opportunities and international exchanges for students, teachers, and other professionals, and vocational and career development.
Members of a Rotary club are part of a diverse group of professional leaders working to address various community and international service needs and to promote peace and understanding throughout the world. Our members are our most important asset. They are the force that allows Rotary to carry out its many humanitarian efforts and achieve its mission.
The world's first service club, the Rotary Club of Chicago, Illinois, USA, was formed on 23 February 1905 by Paul P. Harris, an attorney who wished to recapture in a professional club the same friendly spirit he had felt in the small towns of his youth.
The name "Rotary" derived from the early practice of rotating meetings among members' offices. Rotary's popularity spread throughout the United States in the decade that followed; clubs were chartered from San Francisco to New York.
By 1921, Rotary clubs had been formed on six continents, and the organization adopted the name Rotary International a year later. As Rotary grew, its mission expanded beyond serving the professional and social interests of club members. Rotarians began pooling their resources and contributing their talents to help serve communities in need.
The organization's dedication to this ideal is best expressed in its principal motto: Service Above Self. Rotary also later embraced a code of ethics, called The 4-Way Test, that has been translated into hundreds of languages.
During and after World War II, Rotarians became increasingly involved in promoting international understanding. A Rotary conference held in London in 1942 planted the seeds for the development of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and numerous Rotarians have served as consultants to the United Nations. An endowment fund, set up by Rotarians in 1917 "for doing good in the world," became a not-for-profit corporation known as The Rotary Foundation in 1928.
Upon the death of Paul Harris in 1947, an outpouring of Rotarian donations made in his honor, totaling US$2 million, launched the Foundation's first program - graduate fellowships, now called Ambassadorial Scholarships. Today, contributions to The Rotary Foundation total more than US$80 million annually and support a wide range of humanitarian grants and educational programs that enable Rotarians to bring hope and promote international understanding throughout the world.
In 1985, Rotary made a historic commitment to immunize all of the world's children against polio. Working in partnership with nongovernmental organizations and national governments thorough its PolioPlus program, Rotary is the largest private-sector contributor to the global polio eradication campaign. Rotarians have mobilized hundreds of thousands of PolioPlus volunteers and have immunized more than one billion children worldwide. By the 2005 target date for certification of a polio-free world, Rotary will have contributed half a billion dollars to the cause.
As it approached the dawn of the 21st century, Rotary worked to meet the changing needs of society, expanding its service effort to address such pressing issues as environmental degradation, illiteracy, world hunger, and children at risk.
The organization admitted women for the first time in 1989 and claims more than 90,000 women in its ranks today. Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Rotary clubs were formed or re-established throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Today, 1.2 million Rotarians belong to some 30,000 Rotary clubs in more than 160 countries.
Administration
Rotary is organized at club, district, and international levels to carry out its program of service. Rotarians are members of their clubs, and the clubs are members of the global association known as Rotary International. Each club elects its own officers and enjoys considerable autonomy within the framework of the standard constitution and the constitution and bylaws of Rotary International. Clubs are grouped into 530 Rotary districts, each led by a district governor who is an officer of Rotary International and represents the RI board of directors in the field.
Though selected by the clubs of the district, a governor is elected by all of the clubs worldwide meeting in the RI Convention. A 19-member board of directors, which includes the international president and president-elect, administers Rotary International. These officers are also elected at the convention; the selection process for choosing directors and the nominating committee for president are based on zones, each of which comprises approximately 15 districts. The board meets quarterly to establish policies. While the Rotary International president is chief executive of the organization, the active managing officer is the general secretary, who heads a staff of about 600 persons working at the international headquarters in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, USA, or in one of seven international offices around the world.
Objective of Rotary
The Objective of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster:
- FIRST. The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service.
- SECOND. High ethical standards in business and professions, the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations, and the dignifying of each Rotarian's occupation as an opportunity to serve society.
- THIRD. The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian's personal, business, and community life.
- FOURTH. The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.
The 4-way test
From the earliest days of the organization, Rotarians were concerned with promoting high ethical standards in their professional lives.
One of the world's most widely printed and quoted statements of business ethics is The 4-Way Test, which was created in 1932 by Rotarian Herbert J. Taylor (who later served as RI president) when he was asked to take charge of a company that was facing bankruptcy. This 24-word code of ethics for employees to follow in their business and professional lives became the guide for sales, production, advertising, and all relations with dealers and customers, and the survival of the company is credited to this simple philosophy. Adopted by Rotary in 1943, The 4-Way Test has been translated into more than a hundred languages and published in thousands of ways. It asks the following four questions:
Of the things we think, say or do:
- Is it the TRUTH?
- Is it FAIR to all concerned?
- Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
- Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
History
Rotary Club Moscow International was chartered on May 25th, 2001.
The Charter was handed over in an official ceremony at the Hotel Katerina (Moscow) by the District Governor Carl Vernerson from Sweden, as Moscow was part of the Swedish District 2350 back then.
