Rotary Club of Nairobi

A Brief History of Rotary

On February 23, 1905, Chicago lawyer, Paul P Harris, called three friends to a meeting. What he had in mind was a club that would kindle fellowship among members of the business community. It was an idea that grew from his desire to find within the large city the kind of friendly spirit that he knew in the villages where he had grown up.

Room 711 of the Unity Building at 127 North Dearborn Street in downtown Chicago, Illinois, was the site of Rotary's first meeting on February 23, 1905. At that time, it was the office of Gustavus Loehr, a mining engineer and one of the founding members of the organization.

The four businessmen didn't decide then and there to call themselves a Rotary club, but their get-together was, in fact, the first meeting of the world's first Rotary club. As they continued to meet, adding others to the group, they rotated their meetings among the members' places of business, hence the name.

Soon after the club name was agreed upon, one of the new members suggested a wagon wheel design as the club emblem. It was the precursor of the familiar cogwheel emblem now worn by Rotarians around the world. By the end of 1905, the club had 30 members.

By 1921 the organisation was represented on every continent, and the name Rotary International was adopted in 1922.

Rotary’s guiding principles

The Object of Rotary provides a succinct definition of the organization’s purpose as well as the individual club member’s responsibilities. It guides Rotarians in achieving the ideal of service and high ethical standards. 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:

1. The development of acquaintance as an opportunity for service;
2. High ethical standards in business and professions; the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations; and the dignifying of each Rotarian’s occupation as an opportunity to serve society;
3. The application of the ideal of service in each Rotarian’s personal, business, and community life;
4. The advancement of international understanding, goodwill, and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.

The Four Way Test

One of the most widely printed and quoted statements of business ethics in the world is the Rotary "4-Way Test." It was created by Rotarian Herbert J. Taylor in 1932 when he was asked to take charge of the Chicago-based Club Aluminum Company, which was facing bankruptcy.

Taylor looked for a way to save the struggling company mired in depression-caused financial difficulties. He drew up a 24-word code of ethics for all employees to follow in their business and professional lives. The 4-Way Test became the guide for sales, production, advertising and all relations with dealers and customers, and the survival of the company was credited to this simple philosophy.

Herb Taylor became president of Rotary International during 1954- 55. The 4-Way Test was adopted by Rotary in 1943 and has been translated into more than 100 languages and published in thousands of ways.

"Of the things we think, say or do:

1. Is it the TRUTH?
2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?"

About the Rotary Club of Nairobi

The Rotary Club of Nairobi was born in 1930 when Rotarian John Innes from Leeds, who had been inspired when Rotary’s Founder Father, Paul Harris visited his club in England two years earlier and encouraged him to use his next business trip to East Africa to initiate a new Rotary Club.

He approached the then Mayor Mr. Charles Udall of establishing a Rotary Club in East Africa. Mayor Udall was impressed by his talk and there and then got together twelve prominent citizens to a luncheon at the New Stanley Hotel on 11th March 1930. With this meeting the first Rotary Club between South Africa and Cairo and the third oldest in Africa was born.

His Worship the Mayor, Mr. C. Udall, presided, and among those present were Mr. A.C. Tannahill, Mr. Gill, The South African Trades Commissioner (Colonel Turner), the Very Rev. Dean Wright, and Messrs. W. Tyson, R.F. Mayer,…After listening to Mr. Innes, everyone, without exception, agreed that the forming of a Rotary Club would undoubtedly be to the benefit of this Colony, if its principles were carried out.

Thus the Rotary Club of Nairobi was born and Mayor Udall elected the first President of the club for the Rotary year 1930-31.

The headline on the East Africa Standard the next day, Wednesday, March 12, 1930 read…ROTARY MOVEMENT COMES TO KENYA

These first Rotarians had a constitution drafted and approved within two months. The Club started with 12 ‘persons of high standing in the community.' And by the year’s end, 16 Rotarians met at the New Stanley Hotel for their weekly luncheon. The speaker at the first regular meeting in Nairobi was Mr. H. Monck Mason Moore, later to become Governor of Kenya. He gave an address on Colonial Constitutions.

The Rotary Club of Nairobi was duly chartered in September 1930 although the charter documents were not received until a year later. By then membership had risen to 16. Since then the Club has gone from strength to strength as every Rotary Club in East Africa today tracing its roots back to the Rotary Club of Nairobi. In the subsequent years Rotary was founded in Mombasa in 1944, Uganda in 1947, Dar-es-salaam in 1949, Ethiopia in 1961 and Eritrea in 1997.