An open letter to Rotarians, District Governors and Council representatives
Dear fellow Rotarians,
Every flight begins with the same instruction: in case of a loss of cabin pressure, put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. A parent who helps the child first may lose consciousness, and then neither survives. The rule is not selfish. It is the condition for being able to help at all.
Rotary exists to help others. To keep doing it for the next hundred years, Rotary must first take care of itself: of the people who will carry its service forward. This letter is about that first mask.
There is no crash, and no reason for panic. But the instruments show a slow, steady loss:
| Year | Rotary members | Rotary clubs | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 (centennial) | more than 1.2 million | more than 31,000 | U.S. Congressional Record, House Resolution 142 (2005) |
| October 2026 | 1,160,573 | 36,702 | Rotary Club Central, district and zone report |
More clubs, fewer members. For two decades Rotary has opened clubs faster than it has kept people. Rotary's own website now speaks of "1.2 million Rotary and Rotaract club members", a figure that today includes Rotaract.
Rotary knows this, and the 2026 Council on Resolutions shows it: several resolutions this year deal with the same question - how young people find their way into Rotary (among them 26R-06, 26R-13 and 26R-14). Rotaract is a remarkable part of our family and should be supported. But when Rotary meets a young person at 18, many of the habits that shape a life of service are already formed. By the time most people are invited to a Rotary club, they are in their forties or fifties, with full calendars.
RotaKids are service clubs for children aged 7 to 12, sponsored by a Rotary club, usually in a school, with adult supervision. Children elect their own officers, choose their own projects and learn, by doing, what Service Above Self means. RotaKids clubs have existed for many years, most widely in Great Britain & Ireland, and similar clubs exist under other names around the world.
The RotaKids.net registry lists 465 clubs for this age group sponsored by Rotary clubs (October 2026): 333 RotaKids, 74 EarlyAct, 35 Rotary Kids, and smaller numbers of FuturAct, KinderAct and KidsAct clubs. The Global Media Archive collects 133 independent press articles about these clubs, published between December 2017 and May 2026.
RotaKids Pitești was chartered on 23 March 2014, after more than a year of preparation. Since then:
The full details are in the District 2241 case study.
Now: the parents. RotaKids does not work without parents: consent forms, rides, help at the projects. Parents see Rotary at work, through their own children. Several of the current members of our club first came to Rotary as RotaKids parents. These are exactly the people Rotary finds hardest to reach: active professionals in their thirties and forties.
Later: the children. We are honest about the timeline. A child who joins RotaKids at eight today will not be a dues-paying Rotarian before the 2040s. That is precisely the point. The members who will lead Rotary in the middle of this century are children today. If we meet them only at 18, or at 45, we meet them late.
Twenty years can sound like too long to wait. There is an old Eastern European joke, from the "Radio Yerevan" series, that answers this better than any statistic. A listener calls in: "I am 55 and I would like to study medicine, but by the time I graduate I will be 60." Radio Yerevan replies: "And if you don't study medicine, how old will you be in five years?"
Twenty years will pass anyway. The only question is whether, when they do, Rotary will have spent them preparing the next generation.
Today RotaKids clubs depend on the enthusiasm of individual clubs and districts. There is no common name, no common standards, no common safeguarding baseline, and no brand protection. Clubs disappear when one enthusiastic Rotarian moves on.
Earlier proposals asked Rotary International to run a central program for children under 12, with staff and a budget. They were not adopted. RotaKids takes a different approach: the district leads, and the club and district carry the responsibility. Rotary International is asked for recognition and a name, not for administration.
"But a disclaimer on paper does not protect Rotary's reputation." That is true, and it is the most serious question. The answer is that the reputational exposure already exists today: hundreds of clubs for children aged 7-12 already carry Rotary's name, under different labels and without a common safeguarding baseline. Recognition does not create this risk. It reduces it, by giving every district the same minimum standard - the Safeguarding Framework, built on the RI Youth Protection Guide and the district's own youth protection policy.
"And if a district does not respect the standard?" The proposed framework keeps the final word with Rotary International: the Position Paper proposes a three-year pilot in which RI retains full authority to withdraw recognition if safeguarding reports or standards are not met.
"Our district already struggles to staff Interact and RYLA." Recognition does not oblige any district to start RotaKids. It allows the districts that want it to use one name, one logo and one framework. In District 2241, the day-to-day work is done by members of the sponsoring clubs together with Interactors and parents, not by the district committee, and that is how we met parents who later joined Rotary. A district without capacity simply does not start, and nothing changes for it.
In 2026, the Rotary Club of Pitești proposed Resolution 26R-11, asking the RI Board to consider recognizing RotaKids as a district-led Rotary family youth program. In short:
| The resolution asks for | The resolution does not ask for |
|---|---|
| Recognition of RotaKids as a district-led Rotary family youth program | A centrally managed "structured program" like Interact |
| Use of the RotaKids name and a standardized logo | New RI staff or central administration |
| Confirmation that legal, financial, safeguarding and operational responsibility rests with the sponsoring club and district, under local law | RI to take on legal or safeguarding liability |
| Consideration of the digital infrastructure offered to RI, subject to RI review | Any payment for that infrastructure |
RI's own financial note on the ballot says the cost "cannot be determined at this time" and "would be dependent on the scope and extent of support provided by the RI Board". That is accurate. No change is free for an organization of Rotary's size: trademark, legal and IT review will take some effort. What the resolution does is leave the level of support entirely to the Board, while the governance documents and the digital infrastructure are already built and offered at no charge.
The 2026 ballot also includes Resolution 26R-12, proposed by District 4420 (Brazil), on Rotary Kids. The two proposals share the same goal. If you believe Rotary should be present for children under 12, I encourage you to support both.
I will donate to Rotary International, by free transfer, to Rotary International, the domains: rotakids.org, rotakids.net, rotakids.com, rotakids.club, rotarykids.org, rotarykids.net and rotarykids.com, together with all governance documents and materials published here, whenever RI wishes to receive them. This offer does not depend on any vote.
The complete framework is public and free to use: the Standard Constitution and Bylaws, the proposed Statement of Policy, the Sponsor Guide, the Global Handbook, the Branding & Merit Guide, the Safeguarding Framework and the Position Paper.
I am the founder of RotaKids Pitești, so I am not a neutral judge. Everything referred to in this letter is public, so you can check it yourself. If you use an AI assistant (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude or any other), you can give it this page and ask, for example:
Read https://rotakids.org/open-letter/ and https://rotakids.org/resolution/ with its linked documents. Explain what Rotary Resolution 26R-11 proposes, what it would change for clubs and districts, and how it answers the concerns raised about earlier proposals.
Then decide. If you have a question or a concern, I would be glad to hear from you.
If you are a District Governor, please forward this letter to your district's representative on the Council on Resolutions. If you are a representative, thank you for reading it before you vote.
Whatever the result in 2026, the children of seven will still be there. Let us put on our own mask first, so that Rotary can keep helping others for another hundred years.
With respect and in fellowship,
Adrian Stan
District Rotakids Committee Chair (2016-2019)
Rotary Club of Pitești, District 2241 - Romania & Republic of Moldova
rotakids.org