FLORENCE – A group of Northern Kentucky teenagers found inspiration for helping needy youngsters in the community during a project 1,700 miles away from home.
The Interact Club of Northern Kentucky spent five days in the Dominican Republic at an orphanage, painting houses and distributing clothing to the needy.
“It inspired me to think about how we could support pre-school children back home,” Evan Maines noted in a video documentary of the experience.
The group presented the documentary to the Florence Rotary Club on Monday, July 14. Florence Rotary sponsors the Interact club, an organization affiliated with Rotary International for young people 12-18.
Interact clubs typically carry out two service projects a years: a community-based activity and a project to promote international understanding. Eighteen students and eight adults from Northern Kentucky made the Interact trip to the Dominican Republic, an island nation in the Caribbean.
The group operated out of Highlands Terra Alta, one of more than a dozen camps around the world developed by The Rawlings Foundation Ministry. The foundation, which is headquartered in Florence, also provided support for the group and Steve and Melody Rawlings joined the trip to Santo Domingo. Terra Alta also is the San Francisco Giants training camp.
The group took 22 duffel bags of pre-school supplies and clothing collected by Florence Rotary to distribute during the visit. On the first day, the Interact students served snacks and candies to children from a pre-school orphanage.
“We wanted the students to learn they can make a difference in these children’s lives, one act a time,” Rahn said. “We can make a difference by doing something for others.”
The students also served meals to baseball campers, painted two houses, donated food to the orphanage and distributed clothing to staff members. They also got a chance to tour Santo Domingo and spend an afternoon at the beach.
The international project was particularly rewarding for Billy Santos, a vice president at Bank of Kentucky who served as Florence Rotary president last year. A native of the Dominican Republic, he took his daughter on the trip to show her his homeland.
“It was really encouraging to me to see messages from kids (when we got home) who said they wanted to volunteer in their church or community,” he said.
