ACTIVITIES : Clubs That Care : Tutoring students, working at animal shelter and planting trees are just some of the good deeds done by young people.
Every Thursday 97-year-old Grace Williams looks forward to a visit from Jennifer Leonard, a senior at Nordhoff High School in Ojai.
Grace reminisces about her past, when she was a cook in Colorado. Jennifer relates what she’s doing in school. Sometimes she brings the frail woman flowers. Often she pushes her wheelchair out onto the porch at Mountain Vista Manor where she lives.
Jennifer heads the Interact Club at her school, and visiting Grace is just one of many services the club provides. In fact, the club does so much that it took the award for community projects when Interact clubs from Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Kern counties gathered in March for a district conference.
The high school clubs are sponsored by local Rotary Clubs. Rio Mesa High School organized the first one in the county in 1967. Now there are 10 active clubs. Their projects range from cleaning two-mile stretches of highway to Westlake High School’s award-winning effort to sponsor a needy child in India.
Nordhoff High School’s club only formed last year, and already it has amassed a list of credits:
* Club members trek over to Meiners Oaks Elementary School every Tuesday to spend the lunch hour playing with children who need special attention.
* During one class period per week, members tutor other high school students identified as possible dropouts.
* About once a month on Saturdays, members wash and groom the animals at the Humane Society in Ojai. (“When they look better, more people want to adopt them,” Jennifer said.)
* Members have “adopted” a grave in Ojai that had been neglected. They planted flowers, cut weeds and mowed the grass at the grave of a World War II veteran.
* They assisted Ojai Valley Hospital with its Start a Heart Saturday in September, and during the Ojai Valley Run and Ride in November they sold refreshments and picked up trash.
They spent a recent Saturday morning planting trees along the Ojai bike path next to the Mirror Lake Wetlands Preservation Area. They worked shoulder to shoulder with members of the Ojai West Rotary, the club that sponsors them.
Wearing their Interact T-shirts and Nordhoff High caps, they arrived with shovels at 8:30 a.m. Shennen Cheney pedaled over with her shovel attached to the back of her bike.
Brice Culbertson, a senior Interact member, reflected for a moment on the work at hand: “I thought it would be neat to plant a bunch of trees, and in a few years, come back and see their progress.”
What compels a busy student like Brice to volunteer his time when he could be out earning money from a part-time job or just hanging out with friends?
“I’ve always wanted to help out,” he said. “But I never had any idea how to do it.”
It wasn’t easy starting the club last fall, according to Jennifer.
“I conned everyone I could,” she said. Nordhoff student David Bryson happened to be at the Humane Society when club members went to work on the animals. He’s been a member ever since.
The club now has 15 members, but many are seniors, and Jennifer said she is worried the club will falter after graduation.
She and other members insisted that their club isn’t like some other high school clubs whose members do little and merely want the service credit on their resume or college application.
“They wouldn’t do anything like this,” she said, gesturing to members planting trees in the hot sun.
The Ojai group has impressed Rick Garcia, Rotary’s district adviser for Interact.
“They’ve done quite a bit,” he said. “They are really active in the community.”
Grace Williams certainly seems happy that she gets regular visits from Jennifer.
“She loves it,” said Jackie Bragg, one of the owners of Mountain Vista Manor. “She brightens up when the kids come through the door.”
Nordhoff’s group got started a year ago after John Gray, founder of the Ojai West Rotary Club, spoke to a high school leadership class. He said there seems to be renewed interest among students in volunteering and becoming involved in community service work. But their interest have taken a different turn in recent years.
“So many of them are interested in the environment,” he said.
* FYI
For more information, call Rotary’s district adviser for Interact, Rick Garcia, 485-6288.
