A Rotary Community Corps (RCC) is a group of non-Rotarians who share our commitment to changing the world through service projects.

RCC members plan and carry out projects in their communities and support local Rotary club projects. Sponsored by a Rotary club, an RCC leverages Rotary’s network, brand, and mentorship by partnering with clubs to plan and implement service projects. RCCs increase Rotary’s impact and expand its reach by bringing the knowledge and talents of local people to strengthen their community through sustainable projects.

There are more than 11,000 corps in 105 countries and 257 districts. RCCs are active everywhere Rotary is present: in urban and rural areas, and in both developed and developing countries. Read more about RCC trends worldwide in the annual Rotary Community Corps report.

by Dinah Eng

Fifteen-year-old Leo Nupolu Johnson was in school when the shooting began. It was 18 September 1998, and the country of Liberia was poised between two civil wars: the one that had ended in 1997 and the second that would begin in 1999. Now, in Monrovia, the capital, Liberia’s president had launched a violent attack to eliminate his rivals.

As the fighting accelerated, Johnson fled the school, and in the chaos that followed he was separated from his family. Ultimately he landed in a refugee camp in Côte d’Ivoire. Years would pass before he saw his family again.

Today, Johnson, 39, can reflect on his past from his home in Hamilton, Ontario. As the founder and executive director of Empowerment Squared — a nonprofit that assists and inspires marginalized youth, many of them newly arrived in Canada — he has begun to fulfill a dream he nurtured when he arrived as a refugee in Canada in 2006.

“As a child growing up in Liberia, I never had the experience of what a library looked like,” he recalls in a promotional video for the Liberian Learning Center, currently under construction outside of Monrovia. “Still, as a young man, I had this burning desire that no child should be allowed to go to school without access to books and educational materials. I set out on a journey to make sure that this was going to be a different reality for children going to school in Liberia.”

In 1998, all that lay in the future. Johnson remained in the refugee camp in Côte d’Ivoire until 2002, when civil war broke out there. He fled to the Buduburam camp in Ghana, which was host to approximately 50,000 Liberian refugees. One of the women there, a single mother whom Johnson often helped, was given an immigration document to complete. Because she couldn’t read or write English or French, Johnson filled out her paperwork and served as an interpreter during her interview. As a result, he was allowed to immigrate to Canada with her.

A year after some of its members participated in their municipality’s inaugural road rally, the Rotary Club of Campo Novo do Parecis ventured into a bigger role as a principal driver of the event. The Travessia do Parecis, held in April, followed a roughly 120-mile route in the west-central state of Mato Grosso, with 87 vehicles and 261 motorists participating.

“The setting for the event is full of natural beauty — spectacular waterfalls, rivers with crystal clear waters — and indigenous culture,” says Adriano Paz, a club member and organizer who, with his wife, Heloisa, finished second at the intermediate level. About 35 of the club’s 44 members handled food and beverage chores to help the club raise more than $4,200.

by Orly Halpern

During a meeting of about 50 teenagers in Israel’s western Galilee region, students were grouped in pairs and asked to identify how they were similar and different. Although half of them were Jewish and half were Arab, none of them mentioned that seemingly obvious distinction. When asked why, they told a moderator, “We are all human.” 

The meeting, involving students from four schools in Jerusalem and the western Galilee, was part of a peace education program designed and led by Arik Gutler Ofir, a former Rotary Peace Fellow.  It was supported by a 2016 Rotary Foundation global grant and implemented by the Rotary Club of Jerusalem, just one of the club’s many peacebuilding initiatives. 

The students stayed at each other’s homes and learned about each other’s food, music, and cultures. The project was so successful that when the grant money ran out, a local education board integrated the initiative — which had been co-sponsored by the Rotary Club of Mönchengladbach, Germany, and supported by Rotary clubs and districts in Australia, Germany, and the United States — into the civics curriculum.

“When you bring children from both sides to get to know each other, you create a situation where the other is not an enemy,” says Dan Shanit, a former medical clinician, researcher, and program developer who has served as the Jerusalem club’s president twice, most recently in 2021-22. “Enemies are anonymous. They don’t have a face. What you want is to know the face.”