Rotaract Visits – a great way to spend a Wednesday night

Sacred Heart Rotaract Club Members

Rotary District 7980 has 9 Rotaract Clubs and a 10th one in the process of being formed in Fairfield County <click to see the list>. I had the pleasure of visiting both the Sacred Heart Rotaract Club and the Greater New Haven Community Based Rotary Club on Wednesday night.

The Sacred Heart Rotaract Club is a University based Club with 20 – 30 members that meets twice a month at 9PM in one of Residence Halls at the University. They conduct fundraisers and do community service projects and have recently raised a  fair amount of money for PolioPlus. They are currently evaluating Water projects like the Sooutheast Asia project done by a number of our Rotary Clubs as a possible project.

Greater New Haven Rotaract Member Recruitment at ‘The Bar’ in New Haven

The Greater New Haven Rotaract Club is a community based Club with around 25 members that is made up of young professionals (age range 18 – 30) that get together several times a month, usually at a local restaurant, for a meeting and to network and to plan their activities. The Club recently ran a Chili Cook-off event and a Road Race. On Wednesday the Club leveraged Facebook Ads to pull together a very successful member recruitment event at The Bar in New Haven.

Rotaract is a service club for young men and women ages 18 to 30 who are dedicated to community and international service. Its membership totals over 184,000 in more than 8,000 clubs worldwide. Rotaract clubs are self-governing and self-supporting and can be either university-based or community-based. Individual Rotary clubs sponsor Rotaract clubs and offer guidance and support, making the Rotaract clubs true “partners in service” and key members of the family of Rotary.

Youth Services Progression Map

Rotaract is critically important to the future of Rotary, as are all of the Youth Service programs, as it can be a direct path to Rotary membership for the young professionals when they graduate from college or when they ‘age out’ of the community based clubs.