Two years ago, U.S. Rotary members in Maine set out to improve the education system in Bikaner, Rajasthan, an Indian city near the border of Pakistan. The Rotary Club of Kennebunk Portside chose Bikaner because club member Rohit Mehta was originally from the area and had connections there. Mehta put the club in contact with Rotarians in India to provide desks for four government-run schools. But when community leaders returned with a request for more desks, the Maine Rotarians decided they had to think bigger. The Rotary Foundation had rolled out its new grant model, which required that the...

Before college, business school, or their first jobs, more than 2,000 U.S. high school students are learning what it takes to become tomorrow's brightest business leaders. Each year, nearly 25 Rotary clubs and districts conduct three-day educational retreats in a program known as Camp Enterprise. At each retreat, seasoned business professionals and entrepreneurs teach 100 or so area high school juniors how to develop, launch, and operate a successful business in a free enterprise economic system. The intensive weekend camps, funded entirely by the clubs and offered at no cost to participants...

Rotary General Secretary John Hewko and six RI staff members bicycled 104 miles in Tucson Arizona, USA, on Saturday, for the Miles to End Polio event, raising more than $6 million for polio eradication. The money raised by Rotary will receive a two-to-one match from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In addition to the team from Evanston, 100 Rotary member riders took part in the ride. The fundraising ride is part of the annual El Tour de Tucson bike event in Tucson, Arizona, USA. The race attracts more than 9,000 cyclists a year, making it one of the top cycling events in the U.S. The...

To strengthen their 69-year-old partnership, leaders from Rotary and the United Nations met this month in New York City for Rotary Day at the United Nations. The two organizations began working together with the aim of maintaining peace after World War II. Today, the relationship has evolved to include humanitarian work in areas like gender equality, child and maternal health, and disease treatment and prevention. While the UN's Millennium Development Goals are set to expire in 2015, its leaders are preparing for an even more ambitious humanitarian agenda of eradicating extreme poverty by...

Rotary and its partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) are approaching a significant milestone: the eradication of type 3 wild poliovirus. The last case of polio caused by the type 3 virus was reported in Yobe, Nigeria, on 10 November 2012. "We may have eradicated a second of three; that's a major milestone," said Dr. Stephen Cochi, a senior adviser at the Center for Global Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, speaking to the BBC. Rotary has played an important role in bringing type 3 polio close to extinction. PolioPlus grants have provided key...