New Rotary Club EARLY ACT at Wayne Highlands Middle School
(Honesdale, November 25, 2019)…Close to 30 students at Wayne Highlands Middle School are proving it’s never too early in life to put “service above self.” That’s the motto of Rotary International, to which they now officially belong as members of a new club at school. It’s called Early Act, a younger version of the high school’s Interact Club which is, in turn, a junior version of Honesdale Rotary. The students, age 11 to 13, “hit the ground running,” said Stacey Diehl, Early Act teacher representative. “On Veteran’s Day, they held a breakfast for veterans and an art project honoring the veterans who attended,” she said. Mrs. Diehl, Renee Van Vansickle and Barbara Rodda help oversee the new club.
All three Rotary clubs – Honesdale Rotary, Interact and Early Act— are required to have a local and international project as part of their respective charters. “And the Early Act kids have already jumped into the act!,” said Honesdale Rotarian Heidi Goyette, who is the Rotary liaison and coordinator for the high school’s Interact club. “At the request of Interact, the younger Rotarians are taking on their own version of Interact’s popular Purple Pinkie Project to help eradicate polio worldwide,” she said. The name stems from Rotary International’s End Polio Now campaign, which, along with the World Health Organization and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has helped reduce the number of polio cases around the globe by 99% since the 1980s. Children who are vaccinated have their pinkies dyed purple.
Starting December ninth, during lunch, Early Act members will team up with Interact to offer fellow students a chance to have their pinkies dyed pink for $1. All monies raised during the two-week drive will benefit the End Polio Now campaign. “It didn’t take much to convince these young people to help people around the world,” said Middle School Principal Peter Jordan, Ed.E. When Honesdale Rotary’s exchange student, Sara Lukic from Bosnia, and Goyette’s daughter Sophia showed the students young polio victims from the 1960s, they unanimously agreed to the fundraiser. “The kids in the pictures were all wearing iron lungs,” said Jordan. “They couldn’t imagine life like that.”
To learn more about Wayne Highlands Middle School Early Act or Rotary, contact Brian Fulp at bfulp@himalayaninstitute.org or by phone 570-309-7860.