Rotary in London

Rotary in London has around 1500 members in 68 Rotary clubs in the Greater London area.

Being part of Rotary involves more than just giving something back to the community; its about helping it to prosper and making some great friends along the way. We’re looking for like-minded people to join us. Why not give great causes the benefit of your skills and experience? If you’re interested, contact your local Rotary club.

We’re for Communities

All of our work is about helping communities flourish. Be it organising a charity fun run, or helping with disaster relief anywhere in the world. Club life is really diverse. Because it is you and your fellow members who give it its own unique personality. Rotary was originally founded as a business networking group, and today those opportunities still make up a part of club life. So while you give something back to the community, your business life can benefit as well as your personal life.

Our clubs are friendly places, they regularly invite guest speakers from a wide range of backgrounds to talk and share their knowledge for the benefit of our members. As well as improving social and cultural awareness we can also help members develop their own skills in leadership and public speaking.

You’ll Be Part of A Global Community

When you join a Local Rotary club, you become a member of a global family with over 1.2 million Rotarians around the world. Just about wherever you are in the world one of our 34,000 clubs will be nearby with a warm welcome.

We Help Others & Each Other

During the Olympics & Paratympics, Rotarians volunteered for example, as Games Makers, London Ambassadors and leaders of cleaning teams in the Olympic Village. WheelPower, based at Stoke Mandeville Hospital has an ambitious Olympic legacy project called Wheel Appeal to supply 2,012 sports wheelchairs, costing £3000 each, to enable disabled people to take part in sport. Rotary clubs across Great Britain & Ireland hope to raise enough funds to buy 100 sports wheelchairs. 11-year-old Lydia Cross, the inspirational young fundraiser from North Devon who lost both legs to meningitis when she was two, is the first person to receive a wheelchair through the Rotary Wheel Appeal.

Little Known Facts

Rotarians in Great Britain & Ireland have made significant contributions to the world community, among them:

Sir Ludwig Guttmann, a member of the Rotary Club of Aylesbury, founded the Paralympics in 1952. Sir Ludwig’s Stoke Mandeville Games for the disabled had grown to over 130 international competitors and impressed Olympic officials and the international community. His vision of an international games the equivalent of the Olympic Games themselves was realized in 1960 when the International Stoke Mandeville Games were held in Rome alongside the official IOC 1960 Summer Olympic Games.

Tom Warren, Rotary International President 1945-46 from the Rotary Club of Wolverhampton, and Tom Benson, President of Rotary in Great Britain & Ireland 1945-46 from the Rotary Club of Littlehampton, instigated the first meeting of the United Nations in London in 1945.

E J Johnson, a Past President of the Rotary Club of West Ham, after a suggestion by his wife, proposed that his club should offer to supply white sticks to all 450 blind people in their area of East London. This was the initiator of the white stick for the blind in the UK in 1931.

Rotarians of London District 13 (now D1130) declared, in 1943, ‘that a State medical service is desirable, with clinics for the public to access health specialists’, the inspiration for the National Health Service (NHS).

Information courtesy ol the Rotary Global History Fellowship.