Origins of Rotary

In 1905, Paul Harris, a young lawyer in Chicago, met with three other single businessmen with the idea of forming a club different from the others. He proposed that this club be based on ‘a very simple plan of mutual cooperation and informal friendship such as all of us had once known in our villages’.

These gentlemen agreed to meet again in two weeks, and to bring along other like-minded people who might be interested. The plan was that they should meet in each other’s offices in turn and thus the name ‘Rotation Club’ was suggested. This quickly got shortened to ‘Rotary Club’ and that name has carried forward to this day.

The movement spread rapidly and by 1921 had reached New Zealand. Two clubs were formed here that year – in Auckland and Wellington. Today, there are some 250 clubs and 7000 members in NZ and the Pacific Islands; and 1.2million Rotarians in 200 countries around the world.