Interact Club hopes to raise $70,000 for project
An Interact Club member shows off a letter to Ellen Degeneres asking her to promote the Ryan’s Well project on her show.
After having a successful 2012-13 school year raising $10,000, the Wenatchee High School Interact Club has another year full of fundraising and projects, hoping to raise $70,000 to build a house for Habitat for Humanity and capture Ellen Degeneres’ attention about the Ryan’s Well project.
Interact Club will hold fundraisers all year for Habitat for Humanity, a program that builds homes for local families in need. Their goal of $70,000 is the cost of one house. Once the money is raised, students over the age of 16 can join work groups to help construct the home.
On Nov. 1, Interact Club members collected donations at the WHS football game against Eastmont at the Apple Bowl, raising around $700, according to club adviser Jon Magnus.
He said the club has brainstormed around 50 ideas for fundraisers this year, including a spaghetti night, silent auction, concert, and selling Christmas wreaths around the valley. All the money raised will all be donated to building the home.
“I can’t help but think what a crazy and terrifying thing this is, $70,000 is a lot of money,” said Magnus. “But I’ve watched year after year as these kids do truly amazing things.”
In addition to the local project, the Interact Club continues its involvement with the Ryan’s Well Foundation, the international project that helps build wells in Eastern Africa to provide people with clean drinking water.
The club is working on broadcasting the Ryan’s Well project to a bigger audience, hopefully by getting on the Ellen Degeneres TV show to pose a friendly challenge to other schools to help.
This project was launched on Nov. 1 by inviting and asking people to post Interact Club’s video and sharing the link on their Facebook pages. Members of Interact Club and students from Magnus’s classes have also decorated and prepared 1,200 envelopes to be sent to the Degeneres show, hoping to grab attention of the show’s producers.
“Will this work and are we actually going to be on the Ellen Show? Maybe,” said Magnus. “But even if not, we’ve had a ton of fun doing this, and that’s what it’s really all about. I’m not too worried, we have plenty of ideas.”
