Interact

This year Interact members have volunteered for many community service opportunities, including Santa's Breakfast, the ringing of the bells for the Salvation Army Red Kettle drive, Shining Stars, and multiple events held by Lake Metroparks and Metzenbaum Center.

In addition to their volunteer work, they have organized several fundraisers throughout the year. One of the first and most successful was the Food Drive around Thanksgiving this year. We raised over 25,000 canned goods to distribute throughout different food banks of Geauga County.

Our biggest event each year is the Fashion Show. The fashion show has become the defining event for the Interact Club over the past 6 years. This year the fashion show was April 22nd at Patterson's Fruit Farm Banquet Center and featured West Geauga High School seniors and several teachers as models. It was catered by Guidos Restaurant. It also included a silent auction for two items -- tickets to Mamma Mia playing at the Playhouse downtown, and tickets and backstage passes to see the band Train this summer. Over 80 people bought tickets to the fashion show, and the Interact Club was able to donate over $1,400 to Project Peanut Butter of the Alliance for Youth Development in Ghana to support malnourished children in Africa. We are currently having a school supplies drive to support Elvis Dankoh's orphanage in Ghana. We are hoping to fill several boxes to ship to him by some time next year, and we may continue this on into next school year as well. The Interact Club has also donated $500 to Elvis and also contributes $1000 to the Shelter Box project earlier this year as well.

Next year, we hope to continue with all these projects and add some new ideas as well. We will have another food drive in the fall, and based on the level of success we have we may also add another food drive in the spring semester as well. We also still plan on having the fashion show including a Chinese Auction. We also plan to add an Open Mic Night fundraiser for students and staff to showcase their singing or instrumental talents to raise money for a cause to be determined. As always, there will be plenty of volunteer work that the students will have a chance to contribute to also.