As a flood of students walked through the doors of F111 on September 20, 2018 for Interacts’ first meeting, each officer is getting more and more excited about how many people were walking through the doors. Presidents Ria Ramani and Abhilasha Goel share their thoughts and expectations for the club throughout the year.

Co-president and senior Abhilasha Goel

EE: What are your thoughts on the club? What does the club specialize in?

AG: Well, we’re a volunteer and leadership club. We do both. I mean, we have volunteer events, but we’re not just volunteer. We do a lot of leadership events, we have fall leadership conference coming up on October 14, and it’s what we like to call a big rally, because it’s 4000 people from all over the Bay Area get together and we also have we have leadership workshops, like how to be a better leader, how to work in a group, how to work with people that maybe you don’t mesh with, as well. We also have opportunities like IPC and CPC. So IPC would be International

Project Committee, and then CPC Community Project Committee. And basically, it allows members to get involved with us and learn how to basically plan events and have a leadership opportunity while they aren’t officers.

EE: So far what has happened?  What do you predict the club will do throughout the year?

AG: Our last two meetings, I’m quite hopeful. I think we have a lot of new members who are interested. In the previous years, things have kind of faltered and membership has kind of gone down because as officers, we didn’t really get involved members. So that’s one of the things we’re really trying to work on is creating a relationship between officers and members.

EE: You said the interaction is not that good — how do you plan on changing that?

AG: We want to have member bondings like before FLC, all the five a few FUHSD schools get together and we prep for FLC. We create flags, you know, we make stuff to like basically to hype up the Fall Leadership Conference, and it’s just a great way for members to not only get to know us offices, but to get to know people who are involved in interact throughout the district. And so that’s one of the things you really want to work on is getting member that to come to those to be more comfortable talking to us officers and asking us questions and being like, Hey, I don’t think this is working. Like I have this idea. We just want them to be able to approach us.

EE: How are you going to kick off the year?

AG: With the meeting we just had today, we were talking about fall Leadership Conference and our IPC and CBC committees and the applications for that and we are trying to have a lot more events this year, and we’re gonna have officers, go to them and just be involved with everybody and we’re gonna have a lot more meetings and we’re gonna have fun activities, so they don’t have to be necessarily like, ‘Oh, we have this volunteer event coming up’. No, it’s just everybody’s coming together. And we’re just gonna talk.”

Co-president and senior Ria Ramani:

EE: What are your thoughts on the year? What do you guys want to accomplish throughout the year?

RR: So we basically manage all the officers, we make sure that they all know what they’re doing and as for events we don’t organize events for the smaller [events] [which] officers are supposed to do but we mostly guide them.

EE: What is one of the events the club hosts?

RR: So we actually have a barbecue coming up on the 5th of October after school and it’s sponsored by Rotary and we’re going to make hamburgers and give out chips. And it’s all for free. And it’s just kind of to hype interact up and get members more excited about our club. And that’s pretty much all we have, as of now what we mostly have just like meetings and making sure everything’s on track.

EE: What do you consider to be ‘on track’?

RR: So we basically have meetings and we talked about CPC and that’s basically Community Project Committee and IPC, which is international project committee and we kind of talk about how releasing applications and stuff within each committee and each year we have a topic that we spread awareness on and it’s released at FLC which is like not an event that we organized but it’s organized by the District Council which is all the other areas and interact with different schools and things. That’s called fall Leadership Conference stands for and over there you kind of just like chant for your area. The project topic is released to last year was human rights. And this year we’re not sure about it yet, but it’ll be released October 14.

EE: It’s a chant?

RR: Yeah. So it’s kind of like a school rally, you can kind of think of it so each area kind of chance for their own, you know, their school their area, and it’s kind of like, ‘oh, we’re kind of like, we’re all really tight and we’re like, super close’. And we are really passionate about interact in Monta Vista.

EE: FLC is not a competition?

RR: It is not competition. It’s kind of like a rally. With a lot of workshops, leadership workshops, and things like that.

EE: So is the whole point just to build leadership?

RR: Yes. It is to get you out of your comfort zone and that’s something that I’m happy to say that I experienced. I was really introverted and shy when I first came to high school, and it really opened up my mind and as well as all the other officers and members that I’ve talked to.