The Mark R. Isfeld Interact Club has won an international video contest that included 140 submissions from 28 countries.
The Interact Club is a volunteer service club that gives students from Mark R. Isfeld Secondary School the chance to volunteer in local and international projects. The club is affiliated with the Rotary Club of Comox.
The annual video contest the club won — which has a different theme each year — is sponsored by Rotary International.
This year, the theme was “People of Action.”
Isfeld’s Interact club’s three-minute video mainly highlighted its recent volunteer work at multiple schools in Honduras.
The club’s volunteer work in the Central American country began in 2015 when the club raised $13,000 over five months to build a roof for the Escuela Álvaro Contreras, in the city of Comayagua.
“The money went further than we thought, so we were [also] able to paint the school and buy new desks for all the students,” said Kalyssa Heinrich, a member of the Interact club and the student responsible for spearheading, filming and editing the winning video. “We had help from all the Interact and Rotary clubs all around the district.”
Following that project, the club raised funds to build a library for a school in Rio Negro, a rural area in Honduras that does not have internet. Later, the club helped build an outdoor kitchen for the Escuela Raquel Castro Garcia in Comayagua.
“We built an outdoor kitchen because they are part of a government program in Honduras that provides food for lunches, but one of the conditions is that the food has to be cooked on school property, and they had no place to cook it,” said Heinrich.
“So parents had to bring the food home to cook, and they risked losing that food,” she added. “For lots of the kids, it was the best meal they had all day. We built them an outdoor kitchen and also bought them new textbooks.”
Alongside “bragging rights,” the club will receive $1,000 USD from Rotary International for winning the contest.
Heinrich said the money will go towards yet another project the club is undertaking at a school in Comayagua — building a dental clinic.