About Us

History

Rotary Club of Southend on Sea was chartered in 1921, after launching as a provisional club in 1920 consisting of leading lights in the borough from civic life and business, mostly recruited by the vicar of St Marys church, before Rotary in Essex existed. In fact we were the first club in East Anglia and the 32nd in Britain. It started as a luncheon club with members largely funded by their employers for networking, whilst fundraising and carrying out projects too. Eventually it decided to meet in afternoons. Many years ago, when businesses stopped allowing long lunches on expenses, it changed to its present worker-friendly format of evening dinners. In 2019 this was changed to coffee evenings in a church hall and in 2022 we reintroduced early dinners for those who have not had a chance to eat before meetings. 

We are non political and non religious, although we have members of various politics and religions, and we are mostly not businessmen, actually we are a mixture of retired and employed folk, from a mechanic through shopkeepers to NHS staff, and 38% of us are female and 24% are ethic minorities. We are also an assortment of people, some of whom always thought Rotary is not for them, combined with experienced Rotarians and two children of past presidents of other clubs and one child of a past district governor of Rotary in Essex. Our honorary members include a district governor, past district governor, two assistant governors, with friendly relations with other clubs up and down the country.

Committees

The traditional committee structure was phased out around the turn of this century. Now we have a small team of committee chairs who do not always need committee members for planning, plus ad hoc project chairs. Members volunteer for projects organised by the committee and project chairs.

In theory the president-elect is normally in charge of club administration, looking after the weekly programme, newsletter, website, dinner bookings and socials. In practice the president decides the weekly programme, the newsletter has been subsumed into the website and the website is managed by one or more webmasters within the club. Any meals are booked by the secretary and socials are organised on a rota by volunteers.

The membership chair is really a membership officer as there is no committee to keep and train members - that is organised ad hoc by the president.

There is no separate PR chair but project chairs are responsible for publicising their project. A membership committee member usually runs our social media.

Presidents often take a lead on service projects but sometimes they appoint a service projects chair. Whoever looks after it is responsible for organising or encouraging volunteers to organise fundraising for or hands-on help with local and international projects, and youth leadership development. Members are able to volunteer for international projects with or without the help of a grant, and we aim to publicise and fundraise for our global End Polio Now programme.

These 'avenues of service' known as community, vocational, international, youth and Foundation can either be donations or hands-on help and members can generally volunteer for as many as they like - you are not stuck on one committee.