Serving the community, promoting peace, bringing students together for an important cause, all are always rewarding jobs for the members of Interact Club. However, this year the pursuit of peace made by Interact Club has led to an unprecedented event. For their commitment to improving international peace, members of the club were awarded the Rotary International Presidential Citation by the Rotary Foundation.

President Allyson Choi and vice president Keziah Njoroge have worked throughout the year, scheduling events, organizing community service activities and completing a checklist of objectives to enhance the club’s presence as well as earn this prestigious award.

“We got involved internationally throughout the year in order to promote international peace,” Choi said. “For example, we started a program of Kenyan pen pals, we scheduled an event wherein we made shoes to ship to different countries. Overall, we tried to build an international relationship with other countries in the world.”

Visiting Carlsbad High School to present this award, President of the Carlsbad Hi-Noon Rotary Yvonne Finocchiaro, personally congratulated those receiving awards and went on to speak about the award in more detail.

“The requisite to win this award comes from the Rotary International President, Sakuji Tanaka, who designs a checklist of activities that all Interact Clubs across the United States must complete,” Finocchiaro said. “Our club made it through the extensive work to complete this and therefore got the award.”

This year, the award focused on the theme, “Peace through Service” which challenged the students of Interact Club to interact as a  group or in a community in order to promote peace. Leaders Choi and Njoroge learned multiple lessons through this program, which they plan to implement in the upcoming years.

“We got a lot of momentum this year and we plan on continuing our rate of service while adding on new programs in order to hopefully receive this award next year as well,” said Choi.