The Southern Rensselaer County Rotary Club is proud to be the sponsor of what may be the world’s newest Rotaract club, especially now during the 50th anniversary year of the Rotary organization intended for young adults ages 18 to 35.

Some of you already have met many of the new Rotaractors who are graduate students studying at the UAlbany School of Public Health. (Their Facebook page is Danes Rotaract.) Quite a few of them have already have joined us at meetings, fundraisers, and service days.

To help spread the word about Rotaract around the globe, Rotary International has put together some very personal looks at Rotaract through the decades. That story follows.

The year is 1968.

A wall divides East and West Berlin as the Cold War rages on. The U.S. and the Soviet Union are locked in a space race, and Apollo 8 becomes the first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon, sending back pictures of Earth from deep space.

And Rotary members in North Carolina charter the first Rotaract club, to provide young people opportunities for service.

A half-century has passed since the first Rotaract clubs began inspiring young leaders to take action to improve their communities. The world has changed, as has the way Rotaractors connect with one another. But the underlying values of the program, and what attracts people to it, remain remarkably the same.

To celebrate Rotaract’s 50th anniversary, we asked former Rotaractors from six decades to share their experiences of the program and explain how it shaped their lives.

Click here for their stories.