St Peter Rotary Club is a member of the Rotary International, the first international humanitarian service organization. Paul Harris of Chicago, IL founded rotary International in 1905. It has a network of 1.2 million members in 29,000 clubs located in more than 150 countries. Work toward the improvement of the human condition is shown by our support of polio plus. Rotarians working with the World Health Organization will have contributed time, resources and money toward the eradication of polio in the World by the year 2005. Besides many other tasks where a local club will work with an international club to complete specific projects in the international clubs area, Rotary also contributes to many projects that include feeding thousands in Haiti and providing books to African schools that are without.

World peace and understanding is fostered by Rotary through its grants for Ambassadorial Scholars. These college students spend a year in study abroad. Also, Group Study Exchanges are financed. These are teams that trade 5-week visits in each other's countries. This year the eastern Minnesota, western Wisconsin district, has financed teams to and from Mexico and Korea. Additionally, the individual clubs sponsor foreign exchange students.

The St. Peter Rotary Club started in 1938. Dr. Mel Lenander was the first club president. Its current membership numbers 41. Herb Monke is the longest active member. He has been an active member since 1960. We meet every Monday noon at the Gustavus Adolphus College Campus Center.

Our mission is to be of service in the four avenues that have been identified by Rotary International. These avenues are Club Service, Community Service, Vocational Service and International Service. All most all of our members have performed club service by serving as a club executive or by chairing one of our fundraisers.

Currently, we have served the community by giving scholarships to at risk seniors of St. Peter High School. It is our hope to encourage these students to complete High School and continue with post-secondary schooling. This year we have completed the shelter in "Rotary Park" adjacent to the High School baseball diamond. We also have provided bell ringers for the Salvation Army.

Our vocational service is primarily shared at our weekly meeting where we share the different aspects of our vocations by providing representatives to discuss them.

International service is performed by our contributions to the Rotary International programs, sponsoring a foreign exchange student, and by hosting a Group Study Exchange team.

We finance our programs through membership dues, proceeds from our lunches, our annual October Rose sales, individual member contributions, and we usually run one booth a year at either TRAM or the Rock Bend Festival.