Riverside Rotary Club and Interact

Popular culture has painted a picture of the American teenager as a self-serving person who cares only about shopping malls and meeting the opposite sex. But a group of high school students at Polytechnic High School in Riverside, Calif. has contradicted this image by engaging in some community outreach programs — some reaching as far away as Tijuana, Mexico.

Students in Poly High School’s Interact Club, which is sponsored by the Riverside Rotary Club, have been involved with community service for the past 15 years. Though not as widely known as the Kiwanis’ comparable high school program, Key Club, Interact has become a staple in many high school students’ lives.

Poly Interact boasts 70 members, and is composed of teens that are involved in activities ranging from band, who make up about two-thirds of the participants, to varsity athletics and involvement in other clubs. The club engages in volunteer activities at local convalescent homes and tutors at area elementary schools.

The group was formed in 1994 by Thomas Hollenhorst, an associate justice of the Court of Appeals, Fourth Appellate District, who has been an active member in Riverside Rotary for 30 years, and his youngest son, who was a senior at Poly. Hollenhorst explained that bringing Interact to Poly was not an easy task. “There was an active Key Cub there already. They sensed an intruder,” he said. To gain support, his son, who was an active band member, helped recruit students to the community service program. “It was cool to be in band, and it was cool to be in Interact,” Hollenhorst joked.

The group started off with 15 eager students who wanted to lend a helping hand in their community. One of the first projects they under took was a tutoring program for students at the impoverished Bryant Elementary School in Riverside. Now, the group is involved with the Heart’s Program at Alcott Elementary, which is across the street from Poly.

George H. Ustariz, the president of Riverside Rotary who has been a member of Riverside Rotary for 15 years and involved with interact for 4 years and whose daughter is an active member, explained that the tutoring program, which runs after school from 3:05 p.m. until 4:15 p.m., is becoming more popular every year. He said that more than 130 children receive tutoring through the Heart’s Program, which is an increase from last year.

Interact members also travel to convalescent homes every Thursday to visit with residents and bring gifts like blankets and stuffed animals. “We’ve done the convalescent tours for years,” Ustariz said. In an interview with the Press-Enterprise, he explained that these trips are “very special,” especially since one of Riverside Rotary’s members is a convalescent home resident. “John [Beal] has been a longtime member of the club and it meant [a] great deal to him that we were there for her,” he told the Press-Enterprise.

The project that the group is most proud of, however, is the work it’s doing in Tijuana, Mexico. Partnering with the Tijuana Oeste Rotary Club, Interact and Riverside Rotary have been working to improve Casa Hogar Dibujando Una Sonrisa orphanage that is home to some 54 children. Every Christmas, the group brings food, clothes and presents to the children. But the bulk of their work has been on the facility itself.

Hollenhorst reminisced about the group bringing a new bathroom and roof to the tattered building. “They government didn’t do much there,” he said. “It was all a community effort.”

But he says the work there has just begun. “Currently, the orphanage is too big for the facility it has,” he pointed out. “There is only one bathroom, but 54 kids there. You can’t have more than two or three adults in the upstairs at the same time because you’ll go right through the floor,” he cautioned. “It is not a safe environment for those kids.”

Ustariz echoed the poor condition of the facility, saying that as of now, there is only one showerhead in the single bathroom. “We want to build two bathrooms, one for the boys and one for the girls,” he said.

Hollenhorst said there is a grant between the Riverside and Tijuana East rotaries that will be used to help, though it is undecided if the current facility will be improved upon or if an entirely new structure needs to be built. “The building now needs foundation work, but [the orphanage] has some land [it] can build on,” he explained. But until the time comes when the Interact students can begin the improvements, they will continue to do volunteer work in the states.

Hollenhorst explained that the main goal of Interact is to get students seeing community service as a chance to make a difference. “I hope that when they become adults, they will see the fruits of helping others,” he said. “Everyone has something to contribute.”

He went on to say that children have a natural instinct to help others and to be part of a community, but that often the act of giving back to the community is not something they see in their home lives. “Parents go to work, come home, fix dinner, and they don’t have time to give back to the community,” he explained. “We give them a chance to see that this is possible.”

At the end of the day, Hollenhorst is able to see the fruits of his own involvement. By helping to plant the seed of community outreach into the minds and hearts of the students, he says that Poly High School’s Interact Club is helping to develop people who want to give assistance to others.

“They really are spectacular human beings.”