Every September, buses pull up to a few thousand high schools across the country, and inside those buildings, something quietly remarkable is already underway. Somewhere in a first-period classroom, an Interact Club is meeting to plan its fall service project. On a nearby college campus, a Rotaract chapter is doing the same. And this time next year, a fresh group of local teenagers will pack a bag for a weekend they won’t forget: RYLA, Rotary Youth Leadership Awards.
If you’ve never heard of these programs, you’re not alone — but you should have. They’re where Rotary places its longest bet, and it’s a bet on people, not projects.
Interact: leadership before the driver’s license
Interact clubs are Rotary’s version of a service club for students ages 12 to 18, sponsored and mentored by a local Rotary club like ours. There are more than 18,000 Interact clubs in over 130 countries, and each one runs on the same core idea Rotary itself runs on: identify a need, organize around it, and do something about it. A high schooler who runs a canned food drive or organizes a park cleanup through Interact isn’t just padding a college application. They’re learning, at fifteen, what it actually takes to move a group of people from an idea to a finished project — a skill most adults are still developing well into their careers.
Rotaract: the bridge from campus to career
Rotaract picks up where Interact leaves off, serving young adults ages 18 to 30 — college students and early-career professionals. Rotaract clubs run their own service projects and fundraisers, but they also function as a built-in professional network at exactly the moment young adults need one most: right as they’re figuring out what kind of career, and what kind of community involvement, they actually want. A Rotaract member doesn’t wait until they’re established to start giving back. They start now, and many of them go on to become Rotarians themselves — which is precisely the point.
RYLA: a weekend that changes how young people see themselves
RYLA is different from the other two — it’s not a standing club but an intensive leadership retreat, typically a long weekend, where local Rotary clubs sponsor students and young adults to attend workshops, team challenges, and sessions led by working professionals and community leaders. Ask anyone who’s been through a RYLA weekend and you’ll hear some version of the same story: they arrived unsure of themselves and came home with a different sense of what they were capable of leading. That shift — from participant to leader — is exactly what Rotary clubs are sponsoring when they send a local student to RYLA.
Why we’re betting on this, and why it lands right now
As families settle back into the school year, this is the moment when parents are looking for programs that will actually shape their kids — not just fill a resume line. It’s also the moment when Rotary clubs like ours renew our sponsorships and start identifying which students we’ll send to RYLA next summer, which Interact club we’ll mentor this fall, which local Rotaract chapter we’ll partner with on a joint project.
Here’s the honest truth behind the bet: every service club eventually faces the same question — who carries this forward? Rotary’s answer isn’t a recruitment pamphlet. It’s Interact, Rotaract, and RYLA — a genuine pipeline where young people don’t just hear about service, they practice it, year after year, until leading a project and showing up for your community isn’t something they aspire to. It’s just who they are.
That’s not incidental to Rotary’s mission. It is Rotary’s mission, playing out one generation at a time.
If you’re a parent, a teacher, or a young professional reading this: we’d love to talk about starting an Interact club at your school, connecting you with a Rotaract chapter, or nominating a student for RYLA. And if you’re a Rotarian already — this is the season to ask which young person in your life might be ready for exactly this kind of push.
Interested in learning more about Interact, Rotaract, or RYLA sponsorship through Medford Sunrise Rotary? Come talk to us at our next Wednesday breakfast meeting. No appointment necessary! Just show up at 7:15 a.m. at Studio 67, 67 N. Main Street, 2nd Floor, Medford, NJ 08055