The Hopkinsville Rotary Club has pledged $30,000 to help Hopkinsville and Christian County middle schools launch youth programs called Interact Clubs. The pledge is to cover expenses of the clubs and their sponsors for five years.
“It is important we treat participation in character-building organizations the same as we do sports,” Rotarian Cody Noffsinger said in a news release from the school district. “We compensate coaches and we believe we should do the same for these ‘life coach’ Interact Club sponsors to attract the brightest and best mentors that we can.”
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Noffsinger was the 2021 Rotary Auction chairman, which set a record in April with $397,832 raised in auction proceeds and pledges.
Superintendent Chris Bentzel added, “This gesture and opportunity to teach servant leadership in our schools fits perfectly with our desire to graduate the whole student.”
Across the country, Rotary has Interact Clubs for students ages 12 to 18. Locally, the launch will begin with middle schools in 2021-22 and the possibility of eventually expanding to the high schools.
The club are designed to help students learn leadership skills while emphasizing the Rotary motto of “Service Above Self.”
Sponsors for the clubs in the coming school year will be Kaydee Sevilla at Hopkinsville Middle and Brittany Normile at Christian County Middle. They will each earn $1,000 as sponsors, district spokesman John Rittenhouse told Hoptown Chronicle.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
