Peace is in Rotary’s DNA. This was evident at the Rotary International Presidential Peace Conference when over 600 delegates from 50 countries gathered in London in February. Rotary International President, Gordon McInally, told the attendees that Rotary has a vital role in advancing peace and gave us all the name of “fellow peacebuilders”.

And that is exactly what we are as Rotary. We are a grassroots humanitarian organisation involved in acts of kindness and promoting peace throughout the world. Often, we work under the radar changing lives with our Rotary projects for the better and giving people hope. To quote President Gordon: “Peace is the building block of all we do”.

As the world is facing an escalating crisis in the Middle East, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and with many continents in the world experiencing major armed conflict, our role as “peacebuilders” is as important now as ever.

On a local and global scale, Rotary is taking action to help fulfil our area of focus on Peacebuilding and Conflict Prevention. Rotary creates environments where peace can happen by addressing the underlying causes of conflict, including poverty, discrimination, ethnic tension, lack of access to education, and unequal distribution of resources.

In 2017, Rotary entered into a strategic partnership with the Institute of Economics and Peace (IEP) to promote positive peace. Rotary envisioned the importance of promoting positive peace with the involvement of Rotarians throughout the world and established the Rotary Positive Peace Activator Programme jointly with the IEP, and has trained and appointed Positive Peace Activators in the USA and Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, East Africa, and West and Central Africa.

Rotary International and the IEP is recruiting in other global regions. It is envisaged that there will be more than 200 Positive Peace Activators by 2024.

Through this partnership, you can also join the Rotary Positive Peace Academy which offers a free training course to discover the strategies and tools that can help individuals, Rotary members, cities and nations to build and sustain peace:

Each year, Rotary awards up to 130 fully funded fellowships for dedicated leaders from around the world to study at one of our seven peace centres.

The latest to be opened is particularly relevant as it is at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul, Turkey – the first to be offering a professional development certificate programme for peace and development professionals in the Middle East and North Africa region. Here, we have the Rotary Peace Centre at Bradford University.

Since the programme began in 2002, the Rotary Peace Centres have trained ​more than 1,700 Peace Fellows who now work in over 140 countries. Many serve ​as leaders in governments; NGOs; education and research institutions; ​peacekeeping and law enforcement agencies; and international organizations ​like the United Nations and the World Bank.

Rotary had a vision to help rebuild the world after World War II, we then took ​part in the drafting of the UN charter and we remain a vital partner for UN ​agencies more than 75 years later.

In recent years, Rotary members have negotiated humanitarian ceasefires in ​areas of conflict to allow polio vaccinators to reach children who are at risk.

As RI President Gordon McInally said at the London Peace Conference: “We had a ​vision of eradicating polio from the world and we are 99.9 per cent of the way ​there. We dream big, that is why we call ourselves People of Action, that is why ​we commit ourselves to diversity, equity and inclusion and that is why we ​envision ourselves as global peacebuilders.”