Today we heard from Powers Catholic High School's teacher Stacy Turczyn, who coordinates the Powers Interact Club and has been a long time supporter of both Rotary and her kids at Powers. She joined the faculty in 2007 as an English teacher after graduating from Michigan State. She soon found her students wanted to form some kind of club to do community service so she began to explore their options. She and the students investigated organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and discovered that high school students options were limited. After looking at a number of options they decided to form their own in-school club.
Coincidentally, GVR Rotarian Dennis Matthew, whose daughter was a student at Powers, approached her with the idea that our club would be interested in sponsoring a Rotary Interact Club and she immediately saw that it would be a perfect fit for the desire of the students to do good work in their community and in the world. The Powers High Interact Club was chartered in 2008.
The club has since grown to more that 100 members and students continue to do worthwhile humanitarian work both in our community as well as several international projects. Stacy noted a number of the club's accomplishments over the past 11 years including:
- Collecting over 900 recreational books for underprivileged children in the Flint area
- Making up Christmas "care packages" for 65 soldiers serving overseas
- Doing a "Sock Drive" to provide warm winter socks for homeless people
- Providing water filters for families in Guatemala
- Running a fundraiser to pay for materials to build bunk beds for Guatemalan kids in an orphanage
The hard work and fun shared by the Powers Interact Club has had significant positive impact on both those people who have received their help as well as the students themselves. Behind every one of these students are great parents and a caring teachers. Many, many thanks to Stacy Turczyn for a job well done.