Skip to content

Rotary Interact Club travels to Ecuador

The Rotary Interact Club is a Rotary-sponsored service club for high school students.
8618828_web1_copy_170921-CAN-M-TOURING-QUITO

The Rotary Interact Club is a Rotary-sponsored service club for high school students.

The Castlegar club has been very active over the past few years. Every second year, members have travelled to Central or South America, or Africa to perform humanitarian service projects. Club members fund-raise throughout the year to pay for the trips.

In late August, nine members of the club, accompanied by Stan Hadikin and Lorraine Hartson from the Castlegar Rotary Club, Geoff Yule and Elaine Pilla from the Sunrise Rotary Club, volunteer parent Denise Laurie, and Rotoract members Svetlana Hadikin and Padn Konkin travelled to Ecuador to work on this year’s project.

In cooperation with the Rotary Club of Quito, the team helped to build a school at an Organic Training Farm.

The farm itself is a demonstration facility for the local people to educate them on indigenous farming and building practices. This is seen as a way to help them develop their local economies and to promote methods of building and agriculture that are sustainable, cost-effective, healthy, and good alternatives to some of the other cash crops like rose production which can be detrimental to health and the local ecology because of the heavy reliance on chemicals for their production.

As one of the Interactors noted, “In order for this all to work with the locals, education is required. That is where our Club got involved. The Interact Club raised funds to build a school that will be used to teach adults and children organic farming, products, and marketing. Without our help, the farm could not get to the next step. The school will educate landowners on organic farming methods as well as building methods that are durable and inexpensive.”

8618828_web1_170921-CAN-M-SOIL-FOR-FOUNDATIONS
8618828_web1_170921-CAN-M-SCHOOL-BUILDING-WALLS
8618828_web1_INTERACT-CLUB
8618828_web1_SCHOOL