Rotary is a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders that provides humanitarian service, encourages high ethical standards in all vocations, and helps build goodwill and peace in the world. Over 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 34,000 Rotary clubs located in in countries and geogr aphical areas around the world. Rotary clubs meet weekly, are nonpolitical, nonreligious, and open to all cultures, races and creeds. The Morrisville-Yardley Area Rotary Club has exemplified the Rotary motto of “Service Above Self” since its incorporation over 90 years ago as the Morrisville Rotary Club

 

Supporting Our Community

 

Morrisville-Yardley Area Rotarians worked behind the scenes on the Morrisville bi-centennial celebration in 2004, raising funds for the Robert Morris statue and the musical, “The Man Who Bought a Country”. They have helped the Morrisville Historic Society make improvements at Summerseat and have worked on improvements to the home of Actors Net, the Heritage Center. In the past they provided the Rotary pavilion, tennis courts and garden areas in Williamson Park in Morrisville. They sponsor an Annual Mrrisville Community Easter Egg Hunt and have provided Thanksgiving baskets. You can find them ringing Salvation Army bells at Christmas time and have supplied pumpkins for the YMCA annual Halloween program and helped the “Y” with other programs and regularly serve food at the Trenton Area Food Kitchen. They reached out to help a Yardley flood victim and help others with specific needs. Numerous community service and charitable organizations have benefited from their fundraising efforts over the years, including the Back pack fodd center in Morrisville. 

 

In cooperation with Landmark Towns they sponsored a Lower Bucks RoadRally. You can find them sponsoring Morrisville Night Out, presenting Country Breakfasts and selling hot dogs and other nourishments at Winterfest to help raise funds for the club’s many service projects

 

 

 

 

Supporting Our Youth

 

Supporting our youth is a high priority in Rotary. They have supported an Interact club and the Youth Leadership Academy in the Morrisville high school. They sponsor students each year to attend a week long “Camp Neidig” youth leadership training program in the Poconos. The club has contributed to the Pennsbury Scholarship Foundation and has provided at no cost “I Like Me”  books for children in the public and parochial schools to support literacy and reading. For third graders the club gives dictionaries and donates books at the second grade level to school libraries.

 

The club also recognizes the contributions of the area Boy Scout and Girl Scout leaders with an annual dinner in their honor.

 

 

 

 

 

Supporting Our World

 

Morrisville-Yardley Area Rotarians do not limit their involvement to the local community, however. The club partnered with the Sunrise Club in Lima, Peru, to provide inexpensive, life-saving water filters for families around Lima which are without access to safe water. The club and its members make substantial contributions to Rotaplast, a program that sends volunteer surgeons and staff to remote parts of the world to correct cleft palates and lips, and to ShelterBox which provides emergency shelter when needed around the world. Members have supported the Wheelchair Foundation, to provide wheelchairs specially designed for rough rural terrain at no charge . The club sent backpacks full of school supplies to children in Haiti who had lost everything in the devastating earthquake of 2010. The club and its members generously support The Rotary Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation that promotes world understanding through thousands of international humanitarian service programs and educational and cultural exchanges. One of the major programs is PolioPlus, a worldwide, $1.2 billion effort that is very close to eradicating polio from the face of the earth. Since 1947, the Foundation has awarded more than $1.1 billion in humanitarian and educational grants.

Most of the club members are Paul Harris Fellows, which means that each one has donated $1000 or more to the Foundation in his or her name or the name of a family member or community service person. High ethical standards in personal, professional and business dealings are promoted through the 4-Way Test 

 

Getting Involved

 

     

The Object of Rotary

 

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 profession; the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations; and the dignity 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 world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service.

 

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Find out more about Rotary by visiting the Rotary International web site.

 

For 4-Way Test information see sidebar or click here.