This Membership Month, in celebration of over 100 years of service, we dug into the archives and found any number of parallels between today's Rotary and yesterday's. Though our world is constantly changing, this gallery reminds us how Rotary's core values have remained intact through the decades.

With bloody conflicts raging in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and parts of Central Africa, the message of nonviolence and reconciliation that nations worldwide will observe on 21 September demands more urgent and collective attention. In 2001 the United Nations designated the September date as an annual International Day of World Peace "to be observed as a day of global ceasefire and nonviolence" according to a General Assembly resolution. The day's devotion to peace connects closely with what Rotary members have been fostering since The Rotary Foundation's mission to advance world...

When a life-threatening illness stripped away many of her professional ambitions, Amanda Wirtz, a former U.S. Navy code breaker and professional violinist, turned to humanitarian service and Facebook to give her life new purpose. Wirtz was in her twenties and pursuing a career as a fitness trainer when a sharp pain in her abdomen sent her to the emergency room. Expecting something manageable like appendicitis, she instead found herself facing a rare tumor disorder that required her to undergo 30 surgeries over the next several years. Forced to rethink her life plans, Wirtz began focusing on...

With 12 children -- six girls and six boys -- the Labordes hardly needed to add another member to their family. But they did: Over 40 years ago, Julia Mullikin, a Rotary Youth Exchange student from the United States, became like another daughter to this large family in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico. "She's been a blessing for us," says Maria Victoria Hallal de Laborde who was 18 when Mullikin arrived in 1973. Like many exchange students, Mullikin remains close to her host family. So close that when one of Laborde's sisters was diagnosed with a rare, fatal disease, Mullikin arranged to send the...

Imagine a community where the residents are all free to plant, grow, harvest, and eat healthy food whenever they want without having to pay for it. Sound too good to be true? That's exactly what residents of more than 20 cities and towns in France are doing through a project called Potalib. Launched by the Rotaract Club of Versailles, Potalib was inspired by the Incredible Edible project, an international food-sharing movement founded by Nick Green in England. The Rotaract members obtained Green's permission to apply the concept in France, changing the name to "Potalib," a contraction of "...