Avenues of Service

It is often said that Club Service, the First Avenue of Service, is the fundamental building block of Rotary. The statement is true, because without good organization and fellowship in a strong and healthy club, programs and projects in the other three Avenues of Rotary Service - Vocational, Community and International Service - will not, and cannot, effectively respond to problems and needs in the local and international community.

When Paul Harris, founder of Rotary, wrote in his autobiography My Road to Rotary, "Each Rotarian is a connecting link between the idealism of Rotary and his trade or profession," he wasn't speaking directly of Vocational Service. But he must have had this Second Avenue of Service in mind, because Rotary's classification principle of club membership closely identifies a Rotarian with his occupation or vocation. A man or woman joins Rotary as a representative of his business or profession. Hence, each club member has an obligation to represent his vocation to his fellow Rotarians; at the same time he is obligated to exemplify the spirit of Rotary to others, particularly those associated with him in his daily work. These twin responsibilities lie at the heart of Rotary and are the foundation of Vocational Service.

The basic question concerning Vocational Service that every Rotarian should ask is "What can I do in my daily work to be a little more helpful and friendly to others?" For Vocational Service should be thought of, quite simply, as a living, daily experience.

Here are a few definitions of Vocational Service from Rotarians around the world:

• "Vocational Service is that Avenue of Service dealing with the pride in our profession and performing it in an upright and honorable manner."
• "Vocational Service is that which transforms a way of making a living into a way of living a life."
• "Vocational Service is putting Rotary to work where we work - and in all our lives."
• "Vocational Service is the implementation of responsibility to make business and industry a better place to work and of more service to the community."
• "Vocational Service is improving the quality of life in the professions and in trade, industry, and commerce."

Community Service has been called the heartbeat of Rotary. It carries out the third part of the Object of Rotary, which encourages Rotarians to apply the Ideal of Service to their own neighborhoods. Further, through these acts of service, Rotary endeavors to develop the individual club member by enabling him or her "to find his place in the community and to serve in that place; [and] to cause him to consider his citizenship in its relation to the world, the nation, and the community…"

The portion of Rotary's Object that deals with International Service states: "To encourage and foster…the advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional men and women united in the Ideal of Service."

Rotary's Fourth Avenue of Service was born at a time when nations and their institutions were still buffeted by the aftershocks of World War I. The vast devastation of that war firmly grounded in the minds of enlightened people everywhere the notion that the world could not continue as it had. Mankind was helplessly interdependent and people who spoke the universal, intuitive language of peace had to act in positive ways to prevent war.