Civitan International


W. John Rynearson
Executive Vice President
P. O. Box 130744
Birmingham, AL 35213-0744
Tel: (800) CIVITAN or (205) 591-8910

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Civitan International (CI) is an international service club organization, founded in 1917 in order to serve the community "by filling human needs that are not met by other organizations or by individual efforts." Civitan's 55,000 members meet regularly in 1,800 local service clubs throughout North America, Europe and Asia.

Civitan's involvement with the problems of mental retardation dates back to the 1930s. The creation of the Special Olympics organization in the late 70s led CI to become a major sponsor of the International Summer Special Olympics and local Civitan clubs have contributed nearly 4 million dollars and thousands of volunteers to these events.

In 1991, CI received a grant from USIA for a club-building initiative in Hungary and Romania. Eight clubs were formed in Hungary and two in Romania, results well in excess of the project objectives. Since then, additional Civitan clubs have been formed in Ukraine and Russia. In the latter country, CI's EVP John Rynearson has worked closely with Natalia Sladkova of Special Olympics Eurasia, and Civitan club members have played important roles in organizing local and national Special Olympics events.

This article is from the December 1994 issue of
Civil Society ... East and West

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The URL for this page is: http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~ccsi/csew/94-12/civitan.html
Last updated: June 7 1996

Center for Civil Society International
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