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History
Rotary's emphasis on vocational service has its roots in the founding
of the organization in 1905. And the use of the classification principle
— the guideline by which nearly all Rotary membership is determined
— assures that each club has among its members a cross-section
of a community's business and professional population.
The second part of the Object of Rotary
calls for Rotarians to apply high ethical standards in their businesses
and professions, recognize the worthiness of all useful occupations,
and to consider their own occupations as opportunities to serve society.
In 1943, Rotarians were provided with a tool to help them achieve
their vocational service goals when the RI Board of Directors voted
to make The 4-Way Test an official component
of the vocational service ideal. The test gave Rotarians a way to
assess whether their personal and business dealings were being conducted
with truth, fairness, goodwill, and decency.
For the first 80-plus years of Rotary's history, the second Avenue
of Service — vocational service — was an area that focused
on personal contributions that Rotarians could make within their own
workplaces. Increasingly, however, clubs began to expand the definition
of vocational service by organizing events such as career seminars
and vocational training workshops.
So, in 1987, the RI Vocational Service Committee was called together
— for the first time in 40 years — to redefine the second
Avenue of Service. The committee created, and the RI Board adopted,
new committee structures and determined that vocational service was
now the responsibility of individual Rotarians and clubs within the
workplace and the community.
In 1989, the Council on Legislation
adopted the Declaration of Rotarians
in Businesses and Professions. This declaration spelled out the
high ethical standards referred to in the Object of Rotary, and it
gave Rotarians another tool for gauging their own professional ethics
as well as the ethical standards they hoped to encourage through vocational
service projects.
Vocational service evolved further in the 1990s with two new opportunities
for Rotarians to share their professional skills. In 1992, the Rotary
Volunteers program was brought under the umbrella of vocational
service. And in 1993, the International Vocational Contact Groups
program was merged with World Fellowship Activities to form a new
program called Rotary Fellowships.
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