A service club for students, the Interact Club is sponsored by Rotary, which provides support and guidance, but the students are self-governing and self supporting.
The Interact Club gets involved with school, community and international service activities. Interactors are able to develop leadership skills and personal integrity by demonstrating helpfulness and respect for others, understanding the value of individual responsibility and hard work, and advancing international understanding and goodwill.
Members of the Interact Club of South Delta Secondary, British Columbia, Canada, with Canadian Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister Carla Qualtrough.
Devon Joy and Joelle Hamilton, co-presidents of the Interact Club of South Delta Secondary represented Interact at Rotary Peace Day on 21 September 2019. This annual event is sponsored by the Rotary Club of Tsawwassen, British Columbia, Canada, and was attended by community leaders, elders of Tsawwassen First Nations, Rotarians, members of Tsawwassen, and the greater Delta community.
When they thought about how the Interact Club members could bring about Positive Peace, they thought about their desire to give back to the community, their drive to work with organizations that also promote peace, and their efforts to run a club in a way that builds harmony. They realized that there were many similarities between what is important to them and the eight pillars of Positive Peace.
Through Rotary, Interact clubs have the opportunity to contribute to Positive Peace beyond the borders of our local communities. The help received from the Rotary club makes this possible. Each year Interact look for an international cause to support.
For the second year, they have chosen the Innocence Lost Foundation, a volunteer-operated organization that strives to create rehabilitation and resource centers for former child soldiers in Africa.
Innocence Lost is empowering the youth to get jobs and support themselves as adults, thereby making them less vulnerable to the military factions that enlist them, through a new community center being built in Sierra Leone. The center will provide sports therapy, counselling, and education. The Interact club is planning on using some of the money raised in fundraisers to support the Innocence Lost Foundation, a small contribution to creating peace across the world.
Building community is one of the main contributors to Positive Peace. Interactors take this head-on by doing what they can to give back to their community. Rotary has offered them many opportunities to achieve this. Devon’s and Joelle’s Interact club meetings and events strive to achieve harmony every day.
They welcome anyone who wishes to join our club, with no exclusion, and will never turn anyone away. The two large events they do within the school promote friendship and build harmonious relationships. Every year they spread joy around Christmas and Valentine’s Day with candy grams that students send to their friends, teachers and other school staff.
Rotary and Interact contributes to positive peace in more ways than can be counted. Interactors believe that such peace is important because it promotes harmony throughout communities such as our own, it encourages us to work with organizations to achieve mutual goals. We see the benefit of promoting Positive Peace and want to spread as much serenity as possible.
By Devon Joy and Joelle Hamilton, co-presidents of the Interact Club of South Delta Secondary, British Columbia, Canada
Download the 2019 Positive Peace Report by IEP.
