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What's Interact?
"International Understanding" which come
from "I", "N", "T", "E", "R"; The alphabet
"A" means "Aim at Service", "C" which means
"Communication with others", and finally
"Training of leadership" from the alphabet
"T". These are the four aims of INTERACT.
As a youth club sponsored by a Mother
Rotary Club, Interact set a high goal on
serving the community and training young
leaders. In our District, 3450, there are
totally 40 Interact Clubs, 1 from Macau, 1
from Mongolia and 37 from HK, which are all on
school-basis. They made up 2000 Interactors.
The eldest Interact Club is the Interact
Club of Saint Joseph's College, which was
established in the year 1966. While the
youngest Interact Club is the Interact Club
of Ho Fung College, it was newly formed this
year. Last year, there were only 21, this
incidents that the no. of Interact Club is
growing and it also means that Interact is
reaching out to more and more people in our
District.
In a district with more than 5 Interact
Clubs, a joint organization can be set up,
in our district, it is called the Joint
Interact Council. This year, the aim of the
Joint Interact Council is "Be an Interactor,
be Interactive". Each month, the JIC held a
Joint Presidents Meeting, all the Presidents
of the member schools will attend this
meeting to discuss the latest event of Joint
Interact Council and matter arises from
their own Clubs.
There are altogether 9 committee in the JIC,
one District Interact Representative (DIR),
2 Vice-president, 2 Secretaries, 2
Public-relations-officers, a treasurer and
an International Understanding Director. And
the advisor of the Joint Interact Council is
the District Interact Committee Chairman (DICC).
The Joint Interact Council serves as a
bridge among all the 23 Interact Clubs in
the district, and it help to improve the
communication between Interact and Rotary as
well as Rotaract.
Each
Interact Club has usually one to two
Presidents, and a group of executive
committee is under the supervision of the
President(s). The group size vary from 8 to
20 due to the different scale of their own
Clubs and school policy. Each Club also has
one to four teacher advisors; their job is
to take care of running of the Club inside
the school. The Interact Club President will
have constant meetings with their Mother
Club, that is their Sponsoring Rotary Club.
This sponsoring Rotary Club consist of not
less than five Rotarians, President need to
work with their Rotary Advisors, who are in
fact, their partners-in-service. No meeting
of the Deemed official unless a member of
the Interact committee of the sponsoring
Rotary club is in attendance.
Member Schools:
Saint Joseph's College
Raimondi College
Saint Paul's College
New Method College
Lingnan Secondary School
La Salle College
Shau Kei Wan East Government Secondary
School
Maryknoll Convent School
Marymount Secondary School
Lok Sin Tang Ku Chiu Man Secondary School
Ying Wa College
Yuen Long Merchant's Association Secondary
School
Hong Kong International School
Hong Kong Tang King Po College
Saint Mark's School
Sir Ellis Kadoorie Secondary School
Anglican Choi Kou Middle School (Macau)
Clementi Secondary School
Wan Yan College Hong Kong
Cheung Chau Government Secondary School
Belilios Public School
Ho Fung College
Ying Wa Girl's School
C.C.C. Rotary School
S.B.C. Hui Chung Sing Memorial School
Buddish Wai Yan Memorial College
What is Rotaract?
Rotaract clubs
are part of a global effort to bring peace
and international understanding to the
world. This effort starts at the community
level but knows no limits in its outreach.
Rotaractors have access to many resources of
Rotary Foundation. Rotary International
provides the administrative support that
helps Rotaract clubs thrive.
Each Rotaract club is sponsored by a
local Rotary club. This sponsorship is a
result of Rotary's concern that young
people, or "New Generations", should take an
active interest in community life and have
the opportunity for professional
development. Rotaract provides a vehicles
through which New Generations can find that
involvement.
The Rotaract program gives Rotarians the
opportunity to mentor dynamic young men and
women interested in providing service to
their own communities and the global
community. Rotarians also serve as resources
foe Rotaractors who are in the process of
becoming professionals and community
leaders. In turn, a Rotaract club can bring
new energy to a Rotary club, inspire fresh
ideas for service, increase support to
projects, and help develop future Rotary
club members.
Rotaract clubs are self-governed and
largely self-financed at the local level.
Working in cooperation with their sponsoring
Rotary clubs as partners-in-service,
Rotaractors are an important part of
Rotary's extended family.
You might ask, "What exactly does a
Rotaract club do?" Rotaract club organize a
variety of projects and activities,
depending primarily on the interests of the
club members. There are, however, three
types of activities within the Rotaract
program that all clubs undertake in varying
degrees: professional development,
leadership development, and service
projects. Together these three areas ensure
a balanced club program and provide
important experience and opportunities for
the personal development of each Rotaractor.
What is Rotary?
The object of
Rotary:
The
object of Rotary is to encourage and foster
the ideal of service as a basis of worthy
enterprise and, in particular, to encourage
and foster;
1) The
development of acquaintance as an
opportunity for service;
2) High
ethical standards in business and
professions; the recognition of the
worthiness of all useful occupations; and
the dignifying by each Rotarian of his
occupation as an opportunity to serve
society;
3) The
application of the ideal of service by every
Rotarian to his personal, business, and
community life;
4) The
advancement of international understanding,
goodwill, peace through a world fellowship
of business and professional men united in
the ideal of service.
The birth of Rotary:
The
Rotary movement was born in Chicago, USA, in
1905, at a dinner party attended by a lawyer
named Paul P, Harris and three of his
friends. Harris had arrived in the city some
years earlier and had found it cold and
unfriendly compared with the small town he
grew up in.
An
idea gradually formed in his mind: that of
starting a club where people of different
trades and professions could meet, make
friends with one another, and explore
business opportunities.
His
friends - coal dealer, a mining engineer and
a merchant tailor - agreed. They resolved to
start the world's first Rotary Club. The
name was suggested by Harris because it was
originally intended that they meet in
rotation at the member' business premises.
Response to the new origination was
enthusiastic. Although membership was by
invitation only, it soon became impractical
to continue gathering at members'
workplaces, so regular weekly meetings were
inaugurated at a restaurant or hotel. Other
familiar Rotary customs began back in those
early days. Group singing was introduced as
a means to enhance the atmosphere of
fellowship. The club appointed an Official
Greeter to welcome members and their guests
as they arrived.
The
idea of having just one member from each
trade or profession was also adopted right
at the outset. This was intended both to
provide a balance and variety in members'
interests and perhaps to prevent any sense
of business rivalry from disrupting the
conviviality of the gatherings.
Although the club's original aim was to
provide a social and business forum, it was
not long before members turned their
attention to opportunities for mutual-help
and - beyond that - to ways the club - could
assist the community at large. The Rotary
ideal of "Service Above Self" evolved form
modest projects undertaken by the first
club. It is a motto that has guided Rotary's
development into a world wide endeavor for
the betterment of Mankind.
People in other US cities got to hear about
the Chicago club. Harris decided to launch a
campaign to spread the Rotary idea far and
wide.
Club
number 2 was founded in San Francisco.
California, in 1908 followed shortly after
wards by Club 3 in nearby Oakland, Club 4 in
Seattle on the US northwest coast and Club 5
in Los Angeles.
Rotarians held their first national
convention in August 1910, attended by
delegates form fourteen of the sixteen clubs
then in existence. This meeting formed the
National Association of Rotary Clubs with
Paul Harris as its first President.
Three
months later the first club was founded
outside the United States, in Winnipeg ,
Canada . The following year saw the birth of
clubs in Dublin, London and Glasgow. Rotary
began to take roots throughout the world.
This international dimension was recognized
when the 1912 convention agreed to change
"National" to "International" in the
Association's title. The name was
abbreviated to Rotary International 1942,
the name by which the movement's unifying
organization has been known ever since.
In
one of his speeches, Paul Harris described
Rotary as: " A miniature model of a world at
peace, one which might advantageously be
studied by nations. Rotarians believe that
the universal application of tolerance and
friendliness would bring about the
international peace so earnestly desired by
everyone."
The
"Four Avenues of Service", officially
adopted by Rotary in 1927, can be seen not
only as a statement of ideas but also as a
concrete plan of action to be fulfilled by
member clubs throughout the world. They are:
Club Service, Vocational Service and
International Service.
On
the world scene, the Rotary Foundation of
Rotary International came into being in
1928. It has grown to the stage where it is
today one of the world's largest bodies
granting scholarships for international
study.
The
Grants for the Health, Hunger and Humanity
(3-H) programme was launches in 1979 to
commemorate Rotary's 75th Anniversary. Its
goal is "to improve health, alleviate to
advancing international understanding,
goodwill and peace."
Rotary now has over one million members
throughout the world. Clubs exist in almost
188 countries. Wherever they live, be it
Lagos in Nigeria, Oslo in Norway, Tokyo in
Japan or Athens in Greece, Rotarians are
putting their ideals into practice, both
through the collective efforts made by each
club for deserving causes and by the
instilling of a sense of good citizenship
and high moral standards in each member's
everyday business and personal life. |