Rotary story started over 110 years ago. A Chicago businessman, Paul Harris, got an idea that he should try to improve the business ethics in town and exchange ideas about developing the community, learning new things and making friends. And that was it.

Paul Harris, the founder of Rotary, invited three other Chicago businessmen to a meeting on February 23, 1905. Already in 1910 they decided to extend the idea of their operations to developing the society around them and later to developing the whole world, as their global goal.

Rotary landed in Europe in 1911 when a Rotary club was chartered in London. The first Rotary club in Finland was chartered on December 1, 1926 in Helsinki. Rotary was introduced in Estonia in 1930 and since the year 2000 all the Estonian Rotary clubs have belonged to the Finnish Rotary district 1420.