Rotaract club serves both the community and abroad
USU’s Rotaract club provides students with the opportunity to volunteer and serve in the community.
Sarah Christensen, vice president of the club, said the club helps individuals who are poor and disabled by building houses and insulating schools.
Christensen went to Agua Prieta, Mexico, two years in a row. She said the first year she was there, the group helped a young boy without legs and made renovations to his family’s home.
“We put up bricks, windows and made a garden,” she said. “When we went back the second year, we got to see the house all completed. It was really rewarding.”
She said overall the experience was worth it, but she felt sad because of the circumstances the people being helped have to live in and how much it seems they are taken for granted.
Christensen said she stayed in an orphanage and a church in Arizona on previous trips. The club chose Mexico for its spring break humanitarian trips because of the close location and low expense, she said.
The Rotaract Club has worked with Dorothea Watkins, the founder of Wings of Angels, who organizes projects for families in Mexico who have a member with some kind of physical or mental disability.
“Being able to do a humanitarian trip like going to Mexico was a life-changing experience for me,” Christensen said. “It offers a different view. We can travel and see fun places, but you learn to understand people who have less than you do. It makes you more grateful for what you have, and it opens your eyes to a different part of the world that is not necessarily shown to us.”
Becky Kelley, a senior majoring in human resources and international business, said she’s participated with the Rotaract Club for the past four years.
“It has given me an insight into the kind of services available at the university,” Kelley said, adding that the club can expose participants to a wide variety of service opportunities from which to choose.
“I learn how lucky we are,” she said. “People complain so much about so little that I think it’s a valuable experience to get outside and visit a community that is not as well off as you are. It’s very empowering to know that you can help someone else.”
Kelley said she was surprised by the low standard of housing where she visited and said it was a migrant area where people stay when they encounter troubles moving to the US.
“They get stuck in this border town without a whole lot,” she said.
On one of her trips, she said the group she was with helped a family that was living without electricity.
“They had one light bulb in their living room that they powered from their car battery at night,” she said. The group installed a solar power system and put up light bulbs in all the other rooms.
The Rotaract Club organizes other service activities throughout the year. Kelley said the group has done yardwork, visited nursing homes and renovated an animal shelter.
“It’s a great way to get involved with the community. I think going to school is often a very selfish time in our lives,” she said. “It’s a very nice refresher to take time during college to serve.”
Danielle Richards, a freshman majoring in marketing who has been involved with the Rotaract Club for one semester, said the group went to the Newton community store and helped repaint the outside of the building. The group also went trick-or-treating for food items to give to the local food bank.
Richards said being in the club has given her the opportunity to serve, meet new people and make friends.
“The Rotaract Club is a reputable club,” she said. “It extends not only in college but also into adulthood.”
– nadiah.johari@aggiemail.usu.edu