Youth Service - New Generations “Career Path”
Sometimes we see young people progress or “graduate” from an Interact club to a Rotaract club and/or from a Rotaract club to a Rotary club. As much as we’d like to see this happen on a regular basis, regretfully, it seldom does and when it does, it’s by chance and happy accident rather than by design. This ‘graduation’ is an opportunity we simply cannot ignore. Districts, Rotary Clubs, Rotaract Clubs, and Interact Clubs can all facilitate a more orderly and predictable “Rotary career path” for our youth.
Interact to Rotaract
A crucial step in the process is from Interact to Rotaract. All too often graduating Interact members will go off to college and become disconnected entirely from the Rotary experience. The lucky ones may attend a “club fair” at their university and happen to pass by the Rotaract booth and make that all important connection. The self-directed, proactive students will research online and hope to make make a connection in advance. Why leave this process to chance when with a few simple steps, we can give our Interactors the tools they need and the connections they seek in order to continue with their Rotary family.
Interact clubs while maintaining club rosters and member contact information should add a field to include each member’s college/university destination.
There is an online directory of Rotaract clubs available through Member Access.
Go to: http://www.rotary.org/myrotary/en/search/club-finder
Rotaract clubs should be encouraged, as part of their Club Service, to coordinate with nearby Interact clubs and act as a resource to their Interact grads to establish two-way communication between them and Rotaract clubs at their chosen universities or nearby communities in the case of community-based Rotaract clubs. What could make a new student entering a distant college or major university feel more at home than to have new friends with a common interest in Rotary service! Rotaract friends can help them settle into college life, get right into their studies, and probably help them define their academic majors and career goals more quickly than might happen otherwise.
Policies, Procedures, and Best Practices
We are just in the initial stages of putting together contact information. Our objective is to keep this process as streamlined as possible and produce a “user friendly” directory and/or web site that would allow for easy access to information and transfer of questions. The more help we can give our graduating Interactors as they move out into the world, the more likely they are to become successful members of Rotaract and subsequently Rotarians.