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RI Conventions
*More about
abbreviations used in Rotary |
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In 1912 at
Duluth Duluth the International Association of
Rotary Clubs (*IARC) decided to organise the North American
clubs into eight geographic regions. These were called
'Divisions' and included: Central, Southern, Western, Western
Canada, Eastern, Division 5. However as the number of clubs
increased, the IARC altered this in 1915 with new regions, all
numbered. Details of these can be seen in the 'Genealogy of
Districts' elsewhere in our pages. The IARC had by now made
contact with the British Association of Rotary Clubs (BARC),
later known as RIBI, in Britain and the whole of British Rotary
became district 19. In 1918 the British clubs were sub-divided
by BARC into 6, later 8 districts, and each had a Chairman who
chaired a Council made up of club representatives. This was
different to the IARC pattern where the leader was a Governor
appointed by and responsible to the headquarters of the IARC,
later Rotary International (RI). This was one of the points
which the British insisted be retained when in 1922, the two
Associations came together. There are various examples of a
District Governor (DG) in RIBI (Rotary International in Great
Britain and Ireland) being over-ruled by his/her Council of club
representatives; one recent example was a proposal in one
District to send a motion to the Council on Legislation (CoL)
This was overwhelmingly rejected by the Council, and
subsequently withdrawn.
Although provision had been made
in 1922 for any other region to emulate RIBI and become a self
administered territorial unit within RI, no other area did so
and in 1927, this option was withdrawn. In recent years,
however, other areas such as Japan have expressed an interest,
and some areas have been granted a measure of self determination
in certain matters. Rotary in Finland is one of several regional
multidistricts organizations that Rotary International has
accepted.
There is now a small office in Helsinki which
takes care of the finances of all six districts, collecting the
fees, book-keeping, attendance reports and producing training
material. It also translates all official Rotary material into
their peculiar language. They have also introduced a Rotary
Finland Service cross which comes in two classes. The Rotary
Finland Service Cross is the lower of them and is awarded to a
maximum of three persons annually.
The description of the
criteria is slightly different from the higher class but in
general terms it is given for long and productive service to
Rotary and the ideals of Rotary. The service may have been
rendered also outside Rotary in for example humanitarian work or
education. The Service Cross First Class is awarded for
extraordinary service and achievement. The recipients do not
have to be Rotarians nor do they have to have held office in
Rotary such as DG or similar.
It is the achievement in
SERVICE that is rewarded.
Over the years, as clubs were
chartered in new countries, more districts had to be created. In
addition, particularly between the two world wars, many of the
existing districts had to be divided and re-divided as numbers
both of clubs and members increased. In the same way, political
moves leading to the closure of Rotary clubs in some countries
especially in Europe, led to the removal of some districts from
the list. On occasion, it has been necessary to redefine which
country's clubs are in which district for political reasons.
Even today. efforts to try to keep the number of clubs and of
members reasonably standard, will inevitably lead to further
revision.
One consequence of the increase of the number
of districts, currently over 500, has been the need to create a
new organisational level, called 'Zones'. This was required
because of the grouping of districts used to elect officers to
RI. In 1939, the USA map was redrawn so that the districts were
put into 5 zones. Over the following years, more and more zones
were created to a total of 47 though some were subdivisions of
other zones, For example, zone 18 is subdivided into two
sections, one covering the Southern half of RIBI, the other
covering Belgium and Luxemburg.
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Basil Lewis with help from PDG Kari
Tallberg.
If anyone can give further examples of local developments
similar to that in Finland, please tell us.
www.historycomment.org
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| Posted by RGHF Senior
Historian Basil Lewis, England and installed on the web by Jack
Selway 2 January 2012. |
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