Interact

The Rotary Club of San Marino sponsors Interact Clubs at San Marino High School, Southwestern Academy and Huntington Middle School.

CAMBODIA: More than 700 Technical School Students Have Access to Better Nutrition Thanks to Rice-Meal Donation

The Don Bosco Technical Center and the Don Bosco Hotel School in Sihanoukville, a city in southwestern Cambodia located on the Gulf of Thailand, recently received a shipment of rice-meals that benefitted more than 700 students at the two institutions. The donation was made possible through an ongoing partnership between Salesian Missions and Stop Hunger Now, an international relief organization that provides food and life‐saving aid to the world’s most vulnerable.

Both the Don Bosco Technical Center and the Don Bosco Hotel School provide two-year skill training programs to poor and orphaned youth between the ages of 17 and 22 years with limited opportunities for education. The Don Bosco Hotel School focuses on hospitality programs to prepare students for work in restaurants, at catering companies and hotels and in other areas of the tourism field. The Don Bosco Technical Center, the largest technical school in the area, offers courses in electricity, electronics, automotive repair, printing, web design, audiovisual editing and production, journalism, social communication, secretarial skills, sewing, culinary arts, hotel management and welding.

Primarily known for its social communication and journalism program, the Don Bosco Technical Center is home to the Salesian-run Audiovisual Center which operates as a teaching institution for media communications while providing audiovisual production services to the local community. Started in 2007 by Father Albeiro Rodas Samnang, rector of the Don Bosco Foundation of Cambodia, the Audiovisual Center trains youth from rural and disadvantaged communities in media communications with the goal of teaching them a viable trade that will lead to stable employment after graduation. In addition to courses in media communications, the center offers workshops facilitated by Cambodian journalists.

The donated rice-meals are provided to students during the school day, and for 161 students who are boarders at the schools, meals are provided three times a day.

“Technical students need the proper nutrition to focus on their studies and fully take part in classroom and in-field training,” says Father Mark Hyde, executive director of Salesian Missions, the U.S. development arm of the Salesians of Don Bosco. “Prepared students are more likely to learn valuable skills that will help them gain employment and break the cycle of poverty in their lives while enabling them to give back to their communities.”

Stop Hunger Now partners with Salesian Missions (in New Rochelle, N.Y.) which works to identify needs and coordinate delivery of 40-foot shipping containers full of meals supplemented with additional supplies when available. The partnership was developed in 2011 and since that time, more than 60 shipping containers, including more than 16 million rice-meals, have been successfully delivered to 19 countries around the globe. The meals and life-saving aid has helped to nourish poor youth at Salesian schools and programs and care for those in need of emergency aid during times of war, natural disasters and health crises.

“The partnership with Stop Hunger Now allows Salesian Missions to expand its services for youth in need,” adds Fr. Hyde. “Operating feeding programs for youth in Salesian schools whose families cannot afford to feed them is very important and integral to the success of our students and their ability to gain an education.”

Salesian missionaries have a long history of teaching job skills to youth in Cambodia. Through the United Nations, missionaries began providing technical and vocational education to Cambodian refugees living in camps along the Thai-Cambodian border in the late 1980s. In 1993, at the invitation of the government of Cambodia, a technical School in Phnom Penh was established to republish, translate and write books and educational documents that were destroyed during the Khmer Rouge regime. The technical school contained the only working printing press in the country – and served as a model of hope through education.

80 HMS students at our Aug. 22, 2017 Rotary Interact Club Rush!

The Future is Here!

Meals Received by Rise Against Hunger’s (RAH) In-Country Partner: Children of Vietnam in Vietnam

Aug 23, 2017

San Marino Rotarians and Interactors are delighted to announce that some of the meals from our meal 10,000 meal packaging event on 4/14/2017 have been received by Rise Against Hunger’s (RAH) in-country partner: Children of Vietnam in Vietnam.

Children of Vietnam (COV) is an organization dedicated to building bright futures for vulnerable children through life changing initiatives. COV envisions a future where Vietnam’s children have within their reach the life necessities to achieve their full potential. The organization works toward this future by education, healing, sheltering and nurturing. COV’s nutrition initiatives serves regular meals to more than 8,000 children through schools, orphanages, pagodas, or community programs aimed at street children. In 2016, Children of Vietnam supported 16,406 beneficiaries with more than 1,140,480 RAH meals.

Proceeds from our December 7 Rotary on the Town Party for a Cause with the Chinese Club of San Marino at the San Marino Center will be used to raise the $7,500 required to package 25,000 meals in the spring of 2018 at the HMS Cafeteria.

First Semester Report - December, 2016

Happy Holidays! Our Huntington Middle School Rotary Interact Club thanks you for your support. We have had a great first semester of 2016, accomplishing the following:

  • Recycling campus water bottles and juice cans to earn $300 toward our $500 for the District 5300 Water Project match with Rotary International and Circue de Soleil;
  • Leveling the HMS Peace Garden with our PCC Veterans and HMS students to help SMHS Interact Vice President, Baxton Chen, complete his Eagle project;
  • Selling plants and merchandise at the Hauntington Breakfast to raise $1000 to purchase a ShelterBox;
  • Co-sponsoring the Huntington Middle School Food Drive with ASB;
  • Setting up and selling plush animals to benefit the San Gabriel Valley Humane Society;
  • Sponsoring our first “Party for a Cause” which, with our Plush Adoption event, raised a total of $1,320 for the SGVHS.
  • Three after school Friday work parties to prepare for events.
  • Handmade holiday ornaments for HMS faculty and staff.

Tentative HMS Interact semester II events include the following:

January: Martin Luther King, Jr. Recognition, Chinese New Year Chopstick Competition
February: Valentine’s Day and Mardi Gras Celebrations
March: Annual End Polio Now Relay
April: “Got Stuff?” Recycling Event; National Poetry Month Competition
May: Locker Clean Out Donation Event
June: San Marino Motor Classic Participation
July: 4th of July Riding on the Float Participation

May Peace Prevail on Earth,
Denise Wadsworth, HMS Rotary Interact Advisor

Interactors Sell Halloween Items at the Hauntington Breakfast

October 22, 2016

The Interactors sold Halloween items to help End Polio and provide Shelter Boxes for disaster victims.  They had a separate both to earn money for the Shelter Boxes.

They carried plants and Halloween items around throughout the crowd to make sales.  They made over $1000.00 and will be able to purchase a shelter box.

 

Photos by Natalie Petrillo

Meeting Information

Thursdays at 12:10 PM
San Marino Community Church, Fellowship Hall
1750 Virginia Road
San Marino, CA
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We meet on the first 3 Thursdays of the month at the Community Church.  Our meeting location occasionally changes.  Click “More info” in the Upcoming Events section below to confirm the location.

Guest lunches are $20.00

On the last Thursday of the month we meet at a venue to be announced – in the evening from 6:30 – 8:30 pm

Upcoming Events

San Marino Weekly Club Meeting
March 21st 2024 12:00 pm
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San Marino Weekly Club Meeting
March 28th 2024 12:00 pm
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San Marino Weekly Club Meeting
April 4th 2024 12:00 pm
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San Marino Weekly Club Meeting
April 11th 2024 12:00 pm
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