Cigar smoke wafts through the air, its smell mingling with the whiskey aroma from heavy snifters held in the hands of whiskered men over sixty. This is how the layman might imagine a gentlemen’s club gathering in England in the late 19th century. Possibly with Phileas Fogg in the middle, Jules Verne’s hero, who made his famous bet in such an establishment to travel around the world in 80 days. Modern clubs no longer have much to do with this image – not even the Rotary Club München-Land, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this Saturday. This is shown by the fact that he is currently headed by the first woman in his history.
In general, female members have only been admitted to this global movement since 1989, and the Rotary Club of Munich-Land was “even a bit later,” says Sarah Simon, who has been president of the local Rotarians since July. She will remain in office until June 30th, i.e. for exactly one year, when the board of directors will change. This rotation is now the background of the name “Rotary Club” – it used to be called that because the meeting place of the members was always different.
The meetings take place once a week in the Sixthof in Aying, the home of the Rotary Club München-Land. “Around a third of our 65 members always get together,” says Simon, who lives in Höhenkirchen-Siegertsbrunn and works as a dentist in a group practice in Heimstetten. In addition to personal exchange, the main focus of the meetings is on how to be of service to society, because that is the real purpose of the worldwide Rotary movement, which currently has around 1.2 million members in 166 countries. “On the one hand, we see it as our task to make it clear that we stand for doing good. On the other hand, we emphasize the need for others to help, too,” says Simon. That’s a big change from the old days, when Rotarians kept a low profile and acted by the motto, “Do good, don’t talk about it.”
Sarah Simon has taken over the chair of the Rotary Club München-Land from Christian Meyer.
(Photo: private)
In the meantime, the charitable status is emphasized with some pride: in the past ten years alone, around 500,000 euros in donations have been collected via the support association founded especially for this purpose, which has benefited charitable partners in the Munich region and worldwide. The donations from the Rotary Clubs are to be divided into three categories: according to the target, around 30 percent should flow into regional and national projects, 40 percent into international ones. Three organizations are currently being supported by the Rotary Club München-Land: First, the Salesians Don Bosco in Munich-Haidhausen, who are being helped, for example, to accommodate refugee children from the Ukraine. “Actually, the state would bear all the costs, but because the group is accompanied by a caregiver from the home, the children are not considered unaccompanied and are therefore not automatically cared for,” says Sarah Simon.
The Rotarians are also providing financial support to the “Tent School” association, which builds schools for Syrian children in Syria and Lebanon. And the “End Plastic Soup” project, which is dedicated to the fight against microplastics in the world’s oceans. “We used to buy a cleaning boat for the Nile to filter pollutants there,” says the chairwoman.
Charity, humanity and international understanding have a long tradition in the movement, it is not for nothing that the motto “Service above self” has been committed. In 1985, for example, Rotary came up with the idea of eradicating polio globally by its centenary in 2005. The organization has spent around 600 million dollars on this worldwide – with the effect that the disease actually hardly exists anymore today. Yet public self-adulation has been refrained from, and many people are unaware of Rotarians’ dedication to the fight against polio.
However, the cliché of organizations such as the Rotary Club or the Lions Club is still that only rich men who prefer to keep to themselves go there. But the regional chairwoman vehemently resists this: “The Rotary Club is no longer elitist,” she says. At that time you had to hold a certain social position just to be able to participate financially in the fundraising campaigns. In the past, this requirement alone made it impossible for women, most of whom were economically dependent at the time, to take part. “Meanwhile, many women are Rotarians and it is now fundamentally more about the members acting professionally responsible in the most diverse areas, for example also taking responsibility for personnel,” says Sarah Simon.
Only someone who is suggested by another member can become a member
Unlike a sports club, however, Rotarians can still only join if suggested by a member. This means that even committed citizens who might be willing to make a massive financial contribution to the supported projects are not accepted into the circle without appropriate contact.
Another problem that Rotary clubs have carried over from the past into the present is their age structure. In contrast to the “Round Table”, which is intended specifically for young men between 18 and 40, the Rotarians are on average over 50. But Sarah Simon and her colleagues are also tackling this topic aggressively: “We are very interested, too to take on young people, unlike in the past, professional experience no longer plays such an important role for members.” In addition, there is a general commitment to adolescents, so there are also Rotary scholarships to send young people to other countries as ambassadors.