Building Community Goodwill
Our Mission: The Fox Cities Morning Rotary Club is a multi-generational service organization, committed to:
- Community building work and humanitarian projects.
- Modeling high ethical standards.
- Promoting healthy and sustainable initiatives.
- Providing leadership for today and tomorrow.
Our Vision: The Fox Cities Morning Rotary Club works to foster collaboration with others locally and internationally to encourage:
- Positive action and doing.
- Diversity of ideas and learning.
- Use of technology to communicate and bring people together across generations.
Our Values:
- Service above self
- Living the 4-Way Test
- Hands-on projects & services
- Intergenerational-Being open to other diverse ideas and learning
- Building caring relationships: professional, family and friends
Here is a little history of Rotary International
The world's first service club, the Rotary Club of Chicago, was formed on February 23rd, 1905 by Paul P. Harris, an attorney who wished to capture in a professional club the same friendly spirit he had felt in the small towns of his youth. The Rotary name derived from the early practice of rotating meetings among members' offices.
Rotary's popularity spread, and within a decade, clubs were chartered from San Francisco to New York to Winnipeg, Canada. By 1921, Rotary clubs had been formed on six continents. The organization adopted the Rotary International name a year later. As Rotary grew, its mission expanded beyond serving club members' professional and social interests. 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 motto: Service Above Self.
By 1925, Rotary had grown to 200 clubs with more than 20,000 members. The organization's distinguished reputation attracted presidents, prime ministers, and a host of other luminaries to its ranks - among them author Thomas Mann, diplomat Carlos P. Romulo, humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, and composer Jean Sibelius.
Today, 1.2 million Rotarians belong to over 32,000 Rotary clubs in more than 200 countries and geographical areas.
The Four-Way Test
In 1932, Rotarian Herbert J. Taylor created The Four-Way Test, a code of ethics adopted by Rotary 11 years later. The test has been translated into more than 100 languages (See sidebar).
About Our Club
The Fox Cities Morning Rotary Club was initiated under the auspices of the Neenah and Menasha Rotary clubs in 2009. The Fox Cities Morning Rotary Club provides an early-morning option for Valley Rotarians. Our focus will be "Building Community Goodwill." We will accomplish this by:
- Clearly establishing FCMRC as a Service Organization dedicated to building Goodwill in the Fox Cities,
- Clearly articulating FCMRC/Rotarian Service Above Self philosophy,
- Promote membership diversity,
- Establish credibility with community for grants & hands-on service projects which help build community goodwill.
Many of the charter members of this club have been involved in Rotary for a number of years. The Neenah-Menasha Rotary Clubs have joined together to raise monies for community betterment, such as building parks, planting round-abouts with flowers, planting trees, building raised gardens for seniors and multiple scholarships for youth. The monies are raised through community-building events, such as Seafood Fest, golf outings and the U2-Wine Tasting event. The members of the FCMRC look forward to continuing with these efforts, as well as discovering new ways of building community goodwill, based on the input from our membership.
Invitation
We hope the morning time maybe an option that allows you to consider membership in Rotary to promote Rotary's "Service Above Self" values in our community and the world. Please consider completing an application and returning it to the Rotarian who invited you to visit our club.