An estimated 500 million people worldwide became infected. Many cities closed theaters and cinemas, and placed restrictions on public gatherings. Rotary clubs adjusted their activities while also helping the sick.

This is how Rotary responded to the influenza pandemic that began in 1918 and came in three waves, lasting more than a year.

The Rotary Club of Berkeley, California, USA, meets in John Hinkel Park during the 1918 flu pandemic.

In the United States, the illness was first identified in military personnel in the spring of 1918. The second, deadliest wave peaked between September and November of that year — the final stages of World War I.

Hospitals in some areas were so overloaded with flu patients that schools, private homes, and other buildings were converted into makeshift hospitals. In Chicago, where Rotary World Headquarters was then located, the number of new cases reached 1,200 a day at one point.

Every hero has an origin story. 

“I was 10 years old when the entire journey started,” explains Binish Desai. It began with a cartoon called Captain Planet, an animated TV series from the 1990s about an environmentalist with superpowers. Desai can still recite the show’s refrain: Captain Planet, he’s our hero / Gonna take pollution down to zero! “That tagline stuck in my mind,” he says. “I wanted to do something to help Captain Planet.”