By Grace Borchert

Wednesday, September 3, marks the fourth year of Interact Club at Batavia High School. With the saying “Service above self,” the Interact Club is a local community service volunteer group that helps out in the community multiple times a week.

This year, they are partnering with several organizations such as Lazarus House and Northern Illinois Food Bank, two charitable organizations that serve the needy living in Kane County. Interact Club will also be tutoring at Louise White Elementary School and the Batavia Apartments and volunteering at Fox Valley Special Rec and Orthokids. Members also help out at open house, freshmen orientation, and other BHS events. Many students at Batavia High School who have participated in years past are excited to be returning and were able to share some of their favorite volunteer events.

“Amongst the many volunteering Interact offers, my favorite activity I have done would be watching young kids at Lazarus House in St. Charles,” said Casey Gainer. Another member, Rebecca Kelly also enjoys participating at Lazarus House. According to Kelly, Lazarus House always has something for them to do and they really are appreciative of any help Batavia students offer. Lazarus House seems to be a favorite activity of numerous members of Interact Club but that’s not all they do.

One of the biggest activities that Interact Club plans is through the school’s partnership with Ayensudo Islamic Primary School in Ghana. Students raise money for the partner school in Ghana, most notably with Fannie May sales.

They raised enough money to get the students in the Ghana school 8,000 lbs of books and hope to do some more future projects in Ghana this year. One of the club sponsor’s, Mrs. Reid, travels each year with a group of students to Ghana to help volunteer there.

This may seem like an overwhelming amount of activities but Patricia O’Brien, a member of the club, said that students with extra curricular activities could easily join because they can pick and choose activities that go along with their schedule. Activity days vary, and the group has events on both weekdays and weekends. There are also multiple events a week so if members can’t make a volunteer event because of a practice or school work they can just sign up for a weekend activity instead and still be able to volunteer.

People have signed up for Interact Club for many reasons.

“One of the main reasons I joined Interact was to put it on college applications,” said Sean Townsend, an executive member of the Interact Club. “I also joined because it worked well around my busy schedule and I got to do fun activities with my friends.”

Maddy Astling signed up for similar reasons: “I joined Interact Club because I wanted to be more involved in our community.”

Interact Club is a great way to get involved with the community, which is why most members joined, but it is also a lot of fun. Rebecca Kelly was happy to inform us about the social part of Interact Club as well. Interact club also focuses on building relationships within the club and holds many bonding experiences, like food parties. These bonding experiences can be thought of as little celebrations for all good deeds the members perform. Many students are looking forward to joining for the first time.

“I think that the interact club is a very good club to join because it helps both yourself and others,” said freshman Daphne Kolody. “I’m very excited to join this year!”