What Is Rotary?

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 What is Rotary?

Rotary is a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders that provides humanitarian service, encourages high ethical standards in all vocations, and helps build goodwill and peace in the world. Over 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 34,000 Rotary clubs located in in countries and geographical areas around the world. Rotary clubs meet weekly, are nonpolitical, nonreligious, and open to all cultures, races and creeds. The Morrisville-Yardley Area Rotary Club has exemplified the Rotary motto of “Service Above Self” since its incorporation over 80 years ago as the Morrisville Rotary Club

Supporting Our Community

Morrisville-Yardley Area Rotarians worked behind the scenes on the Morrisville bi-centennial celebration in 2004, raising funds for the Robert Morris statue and the musical, "The Man Who Bought a Country". They have helped the Morrisville Historic Society make improvements at Summerseat and have worked on improvements to the home of Actors Net, the Heritage Center. 

Morrisville-Yardley Area Rotarians can be found conducting the Annual Easter Egg Hunt (a 70 year tradition), selling hotdogs at the Labor Day Family Picnic and other local events and sponsoring carnivals, Gourmet Breakfasts and other events to help raise funds for the club's many service projects. 

You can find them ringing Salvation Army bells at Christmastime, supplying pumpkins for the YMCA annual Halloween program, helping the "Y" with other programs and regularly serving food at the Trenton Area Food Kitchen. And the club is committed to supporting the Reach Out Foundation, a key self-help organization in Morrisville. Numerous community service and charitable organizations have benefitted from their fundraising efforts over the years.

Supporting Our Youth

Supporting our youth is a high priority in Rotary. A unique Youth Leadership Academy has been established in the Morrisville high school. Students are sponsored each year by the club to attend a week long youth leadership training program in the Poconos. The club has contributed to the Pennsbury Scholarship Foundation. Morrisville-Yardley Area Rotarians can be found reading the “I Like Me”  books to children in the public and parochial schools to support literacy and reading. The book is personalized for each participating child and is provided free by the Rotary club. And for third graders the club gives dictionaries. The club also recognizes the contributions of the area Boy Scout leaders with an annual dinner in their honor.

Supporting Our World

Morrisville-Yardley Area Rotarians do not limit their involvement to the local community, however. The club and its members make substantial contributions to and participate in Rotaplast, a program that sends volunteer surgeons and staff to remote parts of the world to correct cleft palates and lips. Members also have supported and participated in the Wheelchair Foundation, which provides wheelchairs specially designed for rough rural terrain at no charge to the poor and crippled around the world. The club sent backpacks full of school supplies to children in Haiti who had lost everything in the devastating earthquake of 2010 and its members support ShelterBox which provides emergency shelter whenever disaster strikes as in Haiti and Pakistan. The club members have generously supported the Rotary Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation that promotes world understanding through thousands of international humanitarian service programs and educational and cultural exchanges. One of the major programs is Polio  Plus, a worldwide, $1.2 billion effort that is eradicating polio from the face of the earth. Since 1947, the Foundation has awarded more than $1.1 billion in humanitarian and educational grants. Most of the club members are Paul Harris Fellows, which means that each one has donated $1000 or more to the Foundation in his or her name or the name of a family member. High ethical standards in personal, professional and business dealings are promoted through the 4-Way Test (found elsewhere in this brochure).

Getting Involved

The regular weekly meetings of the Morrisville-Yardley Area Rotary are at Michael's Restaurant, starting at 6:15 PM for dinner and fellowship. Typically there aredinner speakers an programs on a variety of interesting and informative subjects.To learn more about Rotary go the web site www.myrotarypa.org or contact Michele Fina at 215-736-8077 or at mfina@lowerbucksymca.org.

The Object of Rotary

The object of Rotary is to encourage and foster the ideal of service as a basis of worthy enterprise and, in particular, to encourage and foster:

1. The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;

2. High ethical standards in business and profession; the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations; and the dignity of each Rotarian's occupation as an opportunity to serve society;

3. The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian's personal, business and community life;

4. The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.

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Find out more about Rotary by visiting the Rotary International web site.