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Historic Moments – Rotary and Boys' Week
The first Boys'
Week was held in New York
City
in May 1920 by the Rotary Club of New York and other local
organizations. The event was part of an effort to promote youth
development in the areas of education, citizenship, health and
hygiene, and vocation.
Boys Work Loyalty Day parade Ohio 1923 |
New York club
members reported on the success of Boys' Week at Rotary's 1920
convention, hoping that it would become part of the Boys' Work
program, which Rotary had established several years earlier with the
creation of the Committee on Work among the Boys (later known as the
Boys' Work Committee). The program encouraged Rotary clubs to work
with other community programs and organizations to counter juvenile
delinquency, truancy, and poor physical health, with the goal of
developing good citizens.
Boys' Week events
quickly spread throughout the United States and abroad. By the
mid-1920s, they were being held in almost 600 locations across 25
countries. In 1928, the number of participating cities and towns had
grown to about 3,000.
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 A 1924 poster advertising Boys' Week in
Shelbyville, Tennessee, USA
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The target
audience also grew rapidly. Girls rode on the float sponsored by the
Rotary Club of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in a 1924 Loyalty Day parade
held in conjunction with Boys' Week.
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The Rotary Club of Fort Smith, Arkansas, USA,
sponsored
a float in a 1924 Loyalty Day parade
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By
the late 1920s, the
United States
had established a National Boys' Week Committee, in which Rotary
participated. Rotary clubs were encouraged to support and
participate in their local Boys' Week events as a way to achieve the
goals of the Boys' Work program.
In 1934, Boys'
Week became known as Youth Week, and in 1936, Boys and Girls' Week.
In 1954, the RI
Board of Directors voted to discontinue Rotary's official
sponsorship of Boys and Girls' Week to support new youth efforts,
but it encouraged clubs to continue participating in local youth
service initiatives.
In the following
decades, Rotary went on to create other programs for young people,
including Interact, Rotaract, and Rotary Youth Exchange.
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