The Rotaract Club of Blagoveshchensk

Well, I have only been here for three months now, and I have already become president. But don’t worry—I won’t be taking over for Dmitry Medvedev anytime soon—I am now the president of the newly created Blagoveshchensk Rotaract Club. A few weeks ago, Galina Gusarevich, the current president of the Vladivostok-Eco Rotaract club, sent me an email asking if I would be interested in helping to create a Rotaract Club in Blagoveshchensk. For those of you who don’t know, Rotaract is like Rotary, but for college students and young professionals ages 18-30. I of course agreed to help with this new club. I made a speech to my Rotary club about it at one of their weekly meetings. There were mixed feelings about starting Rotaract from the members of the club, but the president supported it. I went online on the Rotary International website and read all I could about Rotaract to learn how it works.
Then, on Friday, November 27, five members from the Khabarovsk Rotaract club arrived in Blagoveshchensk. There was President Dmitry Burchak, and five girls from his club. We met them at the train station, and five different Rotarians hosted each of the students at their home for the weekend. On Friday afternoon, we made a presentation at a preventative medicine clinic run by one of our Rotarians. There is a lecture hall with a projector and screen there where we made our presentation. We had about 30 young men and women from different universities around the city come to our presentation. They listened to us present about Rotary and Rotaract for over three hours. We explained what Rotaract is, what it does, and also told about what the Khabarovsk club and other clubs around Russia have done. Even I presented (in Russian) telling them who I was, and that I wanted to help create Rotaract here in their city. At the end of the meeting, we invited them to help with the public activism project that we would be carrying out the following day. We also asked them to attend the training session we would hold on Sunday, to start to train new members how to run Rotaract. We received a strong and interested response from all in attendance.
But we didn’t stop at just trying to create a Rotaract club: on Saturday morning, we made a presentation about Interact at School #5 in Blagoveshchensk. Interact club is like Rotaract, but for “high school” students ages 14-18. I was a member of my high school club back in the States for four years, and I served as president of my club during my senior year of high school. We made our presentation at school #5 for a class who had studied English for a long time, so I presented in English about what my club has done, and also why they should join Interact. We also invited them to come to the training session on Sunday. On Saturday afternoon, we carried out our activism project called “Quit Smoking—Eat Vitamins”. We went to the shopping center owned by one of the Rotarians, and offered the people there the option to exchange their packets of cigarettes for an apple. We had about 15 students show up, both from our presentation the day before, and from school #5 to help us carry out this project. In the three hours we were there, we collected over forty packets of cigarettes. As we were leaving, we were stopped by a young journalist from the Amurskaya Pravda, the biggest newspaper in the Amur Oblast. She questioned us about our project and about Rotaract. A few days later, a large article, complete with a color picture, appeared on page 3 of the newspaper, telling about our project and explaining what Rotaract is—essentially giving us a huge amount of free advertising for our club. And here is the article (it even talks about me a little, and I'm in the picture): http://ampravda.ru/2009/12/01/024083.html . On Sunday, we carried out a seven hour training session for Rotaract and Interact at the med-center. We carried out a mock-meeting and went into further detail about how the two clubs work. We also had a brainstorming session where we split into groups and though up potential projects for our club. Then on Monday, we made yet another presentation about Interact, this time at School #13. That afternoon we did another social project where we asked people on the street about social problems that they would like to see improved in the city. We wore badges with the Rotaract logo and introduced ourselves saying “Hello, I represent Rotaract club, a social organization for youth, and I would like to ask you a small social question.” We collected a lot of data from these people, which will help us decide which projects we can carry out to help the city. That evening we had a meeting together with the Rotary Club, and we established our Rotaract and Interact clubs in the city. It was decided that I should be president of the Rotaract club for the first year (until July 1 when the rotary year ends). I already have a lot of experience, having been a member and president of my school’s Interact Club, and also having been with Rotary with the exchange program for over two years now. Even though I don’t speak Russian fluently, I am learning very fast and already have a good command of the language for as little time as I have been here. Plus, I will be able to more easily communicate with Rotary International during the developmental phases of the club. I will be using my experience to help get the club started, but this will also give me a lot of valuable experience. I will be working closely together with the secretary and president-elect of the club, Anton Kasyan. This pair of Anton and me will be really effective during this first year of the club, as I know what needs to be done, and Anton knows how to implement it. We are also working closely together with the Rotary club of Blagoveshchensk to get the club started. They have provided us with an initial meeting place, PR, and also sponsored the visit of the Khabarovsk Rotaract Club. We already have a lot of interested members who are eager to get started right away on service projects. We already held our first meeting on Saturday, with another meeting planned for this Wednesday. Initially, our Rotaract Club and our interact club will meet together, until each of us have a stable membership base. Our first priority is to get chartered and officially recognized by Rotary International. I think that we will have very successful and active clubs here in Blagoveshchensk. We have many factors in our favor. When Dmitry burchak was here, he commented that he thinks we have a great environment for Rotaract and Interact because our city is “small, compact, and young.” I completely agree with him. In addition to this, we have a very active and supportive Rotary club here to help us get started. The relationship between the three clubs here in Blagoveshchensk will be a mutually beneficial relationship, as we can use the Rotary club’s experience and professionalism, and they can use our energy and activism to help with their projects and goals. We are already trying to recruit members from the different universities and areas in the city. Next week, I will be presenting to the students in the English faculty at my university about Rotaract.
Personally, this will be a great experience for me. This is like a practical application of International Relations, the subject that I will be studying in college when I return to the US.
The visit of the Khabarovsk Rotaract club has already created a very strong bond of friendship between our club and theirs, and we plan to continue to work together in the future. We will start taking part in district Rotary and Rotaract events, such as the Rotaract district conference in Chita, and the Rotary district conferences. Once we get established, we will also then travel to other cities in Russia to help start Rotaract and Interact Clubs there, like the Khabarovsk club did for us.