After increasing the number of volunteer opportunities available to students, Interact Club is making a comeback this year despite previously low membership in recent years.
Interact Club co-president Megan Wilkinson feels that the club is really starting to show students what Interact is all about and the opportunities it has to offer.
“We’ve really been showing people that it’s fun to volunteer,” Wilkinson said. “All the opportunities that Interact has are so fun, and I think more and more students are realizing that.”
According to Interact co-president Andrea Flores, more students who have been joining the club have been bringing their friends to volunteer with them.
“Since so many people have joined, volunteering is much more fun with your friends so people just come in with their friends, or as a group, and then they volunteer and get their hours,” Flores said. “It’s just a fun way of hanging out but also doing schoolwork at the same time.”
Wilkinson said that there are various events and places that Interact regularly gives back to within the community.
“We do the 100 Box Challenge in March where we try to get 100 boxes of food to donate to a local food pantry,” Wilkinson said.
Along with assisting at community events, Interact Club also hosts some of its own community service events.
“Our two biggest events every year that Interact Club strictly facilitates is the spikeball tournament and the veterans brunch,” Wilkinsion said.
Flores said school-wide events that the Interact Club helps out with have become more “popular” with students and other clubs.
“The spikeball tournament is a big event that we hold and that’s becoming more and more popular,” Flores said, “and then the veterans brunch, I feel like since it incorporates multiple clubs more people have heard about it through other clubs and then [people say] ‘Oh, let’s volunteer and join Interact.’”
Interact Club advisor Jennifer Detwiler said that because of the amount of students within the club, they can help more of the community with their events.
“The community events largely rely on volunteers and with our club being so large, we have the ability to help the community with all their events,” Detwiler said.
According to Detwiler, Interact is a great way for high school students to have the chance to talk to adults in person.
“I think it also helps the students to get out there and interact with adults,” Detwiler said, “face-to-face as opposed through social media.”
Flores also said that Interact drives students to learn to talk to adults and forces one “out of your shell,” as it gives students the opportunity to learn to professionally speak to people that are important.
“I think it helps mostly high school students, because it forces you to get out of your shell, talk to adults, and just expose you to a different environment than just school,” Flores said. “It teaches you how to network. If there’s people that are really important, you’re going to learn how to talk to them.”
According to Wilkinson, she enjoys working with the members of the Harleysville and Souderton Rotary Clubs because they have some opportunities for Souderton students to shadow members.
“They have a ton of different job backgrounds,” Wilkinson said. “I know one girl is a photographer and I know that students in Interact Club have job shadowed with her and that’s a great opportunity for them, both as a photographer [and] to help the Souderton students.”
Interact also often volunteers at Care and Share Thrift Shoppes.
