Non-profit club Rotary Interact plans to recruit new members and leadership positions to help with meetings and events.
Junior Presidents Rendon Yerman and Emma Yuan are planning a bike drive and food pantry. Yerman said Rotary Interact Leadership is “working on planning and organizing a bike drive where people can donate used as well as “volunteering at a local food pantry.” These bikes will be “shipped to low-income families in various developing countries,” Yerman said.
The food pantry will also be aimed to help low-income families or any people in need as much as possible. Yuan said that the “bike drive” is a continuation “as there were (bike drives) annually in the past before COVID.”
They also plan on “discussing leadership positions and applications” at a meeting mostly likely for “underclassmen representatives.” Yerman said. They will help the club by “making more underclassmen aware of who we are and what we do,” setting up the “future of the club and having a greater impact on the community.”
Meetings when discussions like this take place will be the “last Wednesday of the month during lunch, unless we send out an email otherwise,” Yerman said. “Our main goal is to organize at least three to four service projects” and “expand beyond the local community” and go to the “state, national, and even global level.”
To have success this year, Yerman hopes to get “at least 30 to 40 members to attend each meeting” as they are “only 10 to 15 minutes so it’s not a huge commitment,” and at least “20 people to be involved in service projects and events this year.”
As the club “organizes service work at a large scale” and they want more members participating, “another goal is to get more young highschoolers involved,” Yuan said. Students have “many opportunities such as the Rotary Youth Leadership Summit coming in the winter,” she also said.
Three-year member junior Naomi Negussie has hopes for the next few meetings’ and events’ outcomes as she helped plan and discuss them. “The bike drive was an annual event before COVID so continuing the tradition is important for the face of the club,” Negussie said. “While discussing the upcoming plans for the club, ideas like going out of the country and participating in events in foreign places also came up.” Yuan also talked about how members could get involved. “There are so many opportunities through Rotary that club members will be able to have access to,” Yuan said. “For me, I’ve been able to connect with a lot of leaders in the community like Rotarians who own businesses.”
Yuan also said there were international projects, “for example, a large global project some Rotarians are working on is for women in Guatemala” who don’t have equal access to education. They are “creating connections and possibly sending over some people” to help with this face-to-face project who “don’t have the same access to education as we do.”
