Interact Club, a branch of the Rotary International service organization, is an organization for students ages 14 to 18. The club serves to get students involved in service opportunities, encouraging them to continue being a servant to others even after high school. Each club is responsible for at least two service projects each year.
Local Projects
Interact Clubs can make a difference in their local communities. One easy idea is to participate in an Adopt a Highway program available through the Department of Transportation in most states. After adopting a two-mile section of road, the club is responsible for periodically picking up litter along the roadside, creating a more beautiful landscape and protecting the environment from improperly discarded waste. Texas' Adopt a Highway program provides its volunteers with safety vests, litter bags and roadside safety training. For this project, your Interact Club will need only willing volunteers.
A bread baking project provides an opportunity for club members to work together while doing a good deed. Members would meet to bake as many loaves of bread as possible, and then deliver those loaves to a local hospital, homeless shelter, or nursing home. To collect the ingredients for your bread, first check with local grocers to see if they would be willing to donate ingredients. If that doesn't work, use club funds or assign each club member to bring a particular ingredient, thus dividing the expense to keep individual costs low. Request permission to use your school's food technology lab for the baking so that you'll have access to many ovens and dishes at once, and then leave a loaf of bread for the teacher as thanks for letting you use the equipment. Use easy cinnamon bread or banana bread recipes so you don't have to allow time for yeast to rise (Reference 2).
National Projects
Organize your school to participate in a pencil project. A&M Consolidated High School in College Station, Texas, has partnered with a low-income school in another state in an effort to help students at that school obtain the supplies they need. The Consolidated Interact Club holds a contest in which homeroom classes compete against one another to bring the most pencils. At the end of the contest, usually a week or two long, the pencils are counted and the classes that collected the most are rewarded with a pizza party, ice cream party or cookie cake. The pencils are then sent to the low-income school to supplement its supplies.
International Projects
Partner with an organization like Operation Gratitude to send care packages to soldiers. Research the items soldiers need most and then solicit donations from local businesses and members of the school and community. One other way to help send care packages is to hold a fundraising car wash or baby-sitting night. Then, you can donate the funds to an organization to use for postage when sending care packages overseas.
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Stormy Hickman has been completing freelance writing projects for three years, including research and script writing for the production of computer-based high school English curricula. Currently, she primarily researches and writes articles for eHow. Hickman holds a Bachelor's degree in English from Texas A&M University.