Interact Play Dates with Astor Home for Children
For two years, the Rhinebeck Interact Club has been participating with the local Astor Home for Children in Rhinebeck. They’ve had student volunteers from the club go spend time with the kids and have fun activity festivals. Often, the festivals are seasonally themed, from dress up for Halloween and decorating cookies in the winter to spring time flower planting and outdoor games.
This year, Astor was Rhinebeck’s top priority in terms of local projects. Astor Play dates were organized by co presidents Rachel Dull and Sarah Wood and were attended by 15-40 club members and 20-40 Astor students at a time. Our biggest play date was in the Fall where we had 40 Interacters and activities like face painting, obstacle courses, and a photo booth!
In July 2019, Interact had another Astor Play date with twelve volunteers and 20 kids. We have plans to continue these play dates next year, making them more routine and having lots of new and exciting activities.
Interact Play Dates with Astor Home for Children
For two years, the Rhinebeck Interact Club has been participating with the local Astor Home for Children in Rhinebeck. They’ve had student volunteers from the club go spend time with the kids and have fun activity festivals. Often, the festivals are seasonally themed, from dress up for Halloween and decorating cookies in the winter to spring time flower planting and outdoor games.
This year, Astor was Rhinebeck’s top priority in terms of local projects. Astor Play dates were organized by co presidents Rachel Dull and Sarah Wood and were attended by 15-40 club members and 20-40 Astor students at a time. Our biggest play date was in the Fall where we had 40 Interacters and activities like face painting, obstacle courses, and a photo booth!
In July 2019, Interact had another Astor Play date with twelve volunteers and 20 kids. We have plans to continue these play dates next year, making them more routine and having lots of new and exciting activities.
Interact’s International Projects
With Nicaragua in a sociopolitical crisis, Interact couldn’t return there this year for their annual service project in Leon. Nicaragua has been close to warfare between the unhappy citizens and their corrupt government, an issue that has been quietly boiling under the surface of their leader’s administration until a violent student protest at a university in Managua erupted the social tension across the nation. This crisis has not discriminated against specific regions; it has affected Nicaraguans in Leon, a once safe community where Interact has been visiting for over a decade.
In a region where access to education is difficult, economic inflation, followed by a drastic value drop in the country’s currency has set Nicaraguans in an economic down spiral. The club’s host families in Leon have contacted the students in the US with reports on how dangerous it has been, and how many students have not been able to go to school. A Rhinebeck resident whose family lives in Nicaragua related her story on how the people in her village have not been able to leave their homes for days at a time while transportation issues and more violent protests have caused the Nicaraguan government to resort to chemical warfare and using tear gas to break up assemblies.
To help the host families in Nicaragua, Interact sent $10,000 to give financial aid to the students attending the La Via school as well as pay for several needed repairs to the infrastructure on their campus.
While Interact was not able to return to Nicaragua, the group of members went to Costa Rica instead. In Costa Rica, the students spent a few days at the Earth University, an ecofriendly university with their own banana plantation where Interact learned about sustainable agriculture and what it means to keep the environment healthy whether they use recycled water bottles to as planters to how we reduce our garbage waste.
After Earth University, the club spent a few days living with host families, and unable to keep their hands too clean, spent two days building a playground from the ground up for the children in their community.
When the students returned, they were able to bring back what they learned about sustainability to Rhinebeck and have fostered new projects including purchasing recycling bins for the Rhinebeck High School, creating a raised bed garden on campus to grow our own fresh produce, and doing presentations to the local community to increase their understanding of how to keep the environment waste free.
The club participated in the Drawdown EcoChallenge, racking up points for sustainable actions like recycling, planting trees, or reusing old material. Rhinebeck’s team won second across the country for having the most points.
Now, with the school year starting soon, the club is more excited than ever to share our experiences in Costa Rica with the rest of the school and the Rhinebeck Community.
Interact’s Domestic/ Other Projects:
Shelter Box
Interact has taken on many projects as a service club, one of our strengths being fundraising. Last September the club raised money at Rhinebeck Porchfest to donate to Shelter Box, a relief organization that sends boxes to areas where people are victims of natural disasters. These boxes provide short and long term care for all types of families and are set up by a team of volunteers who teach the recipients how to utilize the items in the boxes. At Porchfest, Shelter box volunteer and Rotary member Louis Turpin taught the club how to set up a tent and explained how each box is designed for specific types of disasters, whether they be hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, or other events.
Each box is equipped with provisions such as tents, hot plates, lamps, water filters, and other tools…however, all of these devices cost a lot of money to produce. One shelter box is valued at $1,000, and for the last few years Interact has raised enough money to buy one shelter box a year, but this year, with the help of all of our volunteers, the club raised enough money to purchase two!
Tree Planting and Cemetery Clean Up
Interact participates seasonally at the Mill Road Cemetery where for the past few years we’ve done fall and spring clean ups as well as tree plantings. On site is a natural burial ground where club members and Rotarians have gone to clean up the wooded areas to provide more space for gravesites and give wildlife safe spaces to live in the extreme weather of winter and summer.
We’ve planted over 30 trees this year, keeping up with our goals of environmental health and other practices from the Costa Rica project.