Los Banos Rotary Club History
Interact club to build playgrounds in Mexico
Vicki Crandall

The Interact Club, sponsored by the Rotary Club, is a community service group for high school teens. They work within our own community, planting trees, cleaning up parks and other area facilities. They also volunteer their time to help out at city events like Breakfast with Santa Claus and the May Day Parade.

As if that were not enough to keep these kids busy, they also spend their weekends refurbishing old playground equipment. After welding, sanding, painting and putting these playgrounds together, they take them apart, load them on a truck and head to Mexico where they will unload everything and put it all back together… That is after they have mixed and laid the foundation for it to go on.

Working in conjunction with Mexico, Interact chooses a place in great need of a safe environment for children to play, like schools, hospitals, parks etc. They also donate school desks, chairs, computers and more that they have restored.

The trip to Mexico will last four days and two of those days are spent on the road. Students have two days to deliver, unload and install a complete playground. But before they can even begin to put these playgrounds together, they will spend hours picking up garbage and broken glass that is scattered everywhere. Once the area is cleaned up, they start the process of mixing the foundation, which is all done by hand. The foundation will set overnight and students will return early in the morning to build the playground.

Along with all their hard work, each student pays $100 out of their own pocket to cover their portion of expenses for the trip to Mexico. Their housing quarters are bungalow style homes and students bring sleeping bags and find a place on the floor to sleep. The group as a whole also puts in another $500 to cover the cost for paint and other needed supplies.

So where does their motivation come from? Travis Salha participated in last year’s trip where they put up a playground at an orphanage.

“The children stood behind a fence watching and waiting,” he said. The play area was basically a garbage dump – unclean and unsafe.

“You can never know the full impact until you finish and you see the kids come out to play,” said Travis, “We take everything for granted here.”

Most of the students who go on one of these trips will return to do it again the following year.

Interact, students receiving invaluable and life changing experiences while bringing joy and hope to others.

2001

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