By Ariana Aminian
Vice President, Westlake Interact
On Friday 18 June, Westlake’s new Rotary Club was honoured to have District Commissioner Elaine Meade, Presidents Phil Ashton of Takapuna North and Bruce Morrison of North Harbour Rotary Club, join one of our weekly meetings to inaugurate our first official Rotary Interact group at Westlake Girls High School.
Rotary Interact is a club that provides a welcoming, supportive environment, acting as a great place for students to get involved with their communities and carry out acts of service in a social environment.
We are very excited to announce we are now officially certified and chartered with Rotary. As an official youth group, we operate based on the official Rotary model and are sponsored by local Rotary clubs in the community. Our Rotary officers accepted the certificate on behalf of the club, and it was great for all club members to meet and hear from Rotary officials such as Elaine, and Oli Ogbonna, a youth liaison officer, about their involvement and experience in Rotary over the past few years.
Our Rotary club has now successfully closed our first project as a group, which was a blanket collection in support of the Auckland City Mission. We just wanted to express our gratitude and thank everyone that donated and supported our club’s first project, getting behind such a good cause for Auckland’s homeless community over Winter. Our officers have now delivered all the blankets brought in by students and the community to the City Mission, which were much appreciated.
We will have more information to come regarding the Auckland City Mission visit and our next event – so keep an eye out for us! We hope to have your support.
Pictured above from left are, (back) Jasmine Foote, Bruce Morrison, Vivianne McDermott, Phil Ashton, (front) Elaine Mead, student officers Diya Shah, Shella Dabbach, Ariana Aminian and Micah De Leon.