Rotary International District 7510 Group Study Exchange

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. Approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 32,000 clubs in more than 200 countries and geographical areas.

Rotary club membership represents a cross-section of the community's business and professional men and women. The world's Rotary clubs meet weekly and are nonpolitical, nonreligious, and open to all cultures, races, and creeds.

The main objective of Rotary is service in the community, in the workplace, and throughout the world. Rotarians develop community service projects that address many of today's most critical issues, such as children at risk, poverty and hunger, the environment, illiteracy, and violence.

They also support programs for youth, educational opportunities and international exchanges for students, teachers, and other professionals, and vocational and career development. The Rotary motto is Service Above Self.

Although Rotary clubs develop autonomous service programs, all Rotarians worldwide are united in a campaign for the global eradication of polio. In the 1980s, Rotarians raised US$240 million to immunize the children of the world; by 2005, Rotary's centenary year and the target date for the certification of a polio-free world, the PolioPlus program will have contributed US$500 million to this cause. In addition, Rotary has provided an army of volunteers to promote and assist at national immunization days in polio-endemic countries around the world.

The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International is a not-for-profit corporation that promotes world understanding through international humanitarian service programs and educational and cultural exchanges. It is supported solely by voluntary contributions from Rotarians and others who share its vision of a better world. Since 1947, the Foundation has awarded more than US$1.1 billion in humanitarian and educational grants, which are initiated and administered by local Rotary clubs and districts.

Rotary District 7510 is a group of clubs associated with Rotary International in central New Jersey. Our purpose is to help our individual clubs advance the Object of Rotary. For more information on how you can get involved with Rotary on the district level, please see http://www.rotarynj.org.

Rotary International District 7510, located about halfway between New York City and Philadelphia, contains 43 clubs, covering a five county area in Central New Jersey, USA. The Central New Jersey region, comprised of Hunterdon, Mercer, Middlesex, Somerset and Union Counties, is a diverse area ranging from densely populated cities to sparsely populated rural farmland. The varied economy includes heavy industry such as auto manufacturing, petroleum, pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing, biotechnology and electronics research and development, agriculture and major service industries including market research, educational testing and state government. The District is home to Trenton, the State Capital, and several internationally renowned institutions of higher learning including Princeton University, Princeton Theological Seminary, Thomas Edison State College, The College of New Jersey, Rider University which includes Westminster Choir College, Institute For Advanced Study and Rutgers University.

The Group Study Exchange (GSE) program of the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International is a unique cultural and vocational exchange opportunity for young business and professional men and women between the ages of 25 and 40 in the initial years of their professional life. The program, provides travel grants for teams of participants to exchange visits between paired areas in different countries. For four to six weeks, team members study the host country's institutions and ways of life, observe their own vocations as practices abroad, develop personal and professional relationships, and exchange ideas. Team members come from corporations, small businesses, community organizations, medical and educational facilities, government offices, and nonprofit agencies.