Genesis: Our coming into being

It was the 27th of November 1937, when the crisp mountain air of Baguio carried the promise of something new. In the elegant, newly inaugurated social hall of the Pines Hotel (shown above circa 1970), a meeting unlike any other was called to order. It was here that the seed of the Rotary Club of Baguio was planted. The gathering was led by our mother club, the Rotary Club of Manila, with its delegation headed by the distinguished Justice George Malcolm. The hall was alive with energy, filled with men of vision who shared one dream—that Rotary’s spirit of fellowship and service would take root in the north.

Three months later, on 21 February 1938, that dream became reality. Rotary International approved the Charter of the Rotary Club of Baguio. At that moment, our club became the 4,587th Rotary Club in the world, the 6th in the Philippines, and most proudly, the first Rotary Club north of Manila. Thirty-three years after Rotary’s founding in  Chicago, its flame now burned brightly in the cool hills of Benguet.