The Rotary Club of Dover
Chartered in May 1924, the Rotary Club of Dover has a long history of service to the local, state and international community.
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. Approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 31,000 Rotary clubs located in 166 countries.
Rotary club membership represents a cross-section of the community's business and professional men and women. The Rotary Club of Dover holds weekly meetings each Wednesday at 12:15pm at the Top of the Chop 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. The Rotary motto is Service Above Self.
Although Rotary clubs develop autonomous service programs, all Rotarians worldwide are united in a campaign for the global eradication of polio. In the 1980's, Rotarians raised US$240 million to immunize the children of the world; by 2005, Rotary's centenary year and the target date for the certification of a polio-free world, the PolioPlus program will have contributed US$500 million to this cause. Part of the proceeds from the Dover Dancing Bears will fund Dover Rotary Charity Projects such as PolioPlus, the shoe and boot fund, Senior Visits, the Milk Fund, Back to School Project and more than $10,000 in local scholarships.
For more information about the Rotary Club of Dover, contact us at 603-742-1971, or mail at PO Box 1801, Dover, NH 03821-1801.
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:
- The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;
- High ethical standards in business and professions; the recognitions of the worthiness of all useful occupations; and the dignifying by each Rotarian of his occupation as an opportunity to serve society;
- The application of service of every Rotarian to his personal, business and community life;
- The advancement of international understanding, good will, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional men united in the ideal of service.
The Four-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 Four-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 test 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 Four-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?"