District Youth Service Committee 2020 – 21 Update, By President Bonnie B. Wong

Reaching Out to Primary

By President Bonnie B. Wong, Rotary Club of Wanchai Secretary, Work Group on Reaching Out to Primary

Rotary International District 3450 has formed a Work Group to extend the vision of Rotary to primary school students in Hong Kong under Chairperson PP Wing Leung of Rotary Club of Kowloon West. At present, Interact is Rotary’s service club for high school students ages 12 to 18, and Rotaract is Rotary’s service club for young people from 18 years and up. However, RID 3450 lack any unified program for school-aged children under 12 years old. Our work group, “Reaching out to Primary”, is currently consulting various stakeholders in the education sector with the goal of generating a proposal for action by March 2021 and a resolution by the end of the Rotary Year. Our work includes reviewing existing and past club and district projects that involve younger children, such as the Hip Hop Rookie Star Dance Contest, RC HK Island West’s Adopt A School, RC HK Island East’s Discover the Entrepreneur in You, Kideract Club of RC of Central, RC Kowloon West’s Gifted Education Foundation etc., in order to learn from their experiences and wonder what unique value Rotary can provide for this target population. Our next step will be speaking with school managers, principals, teachers, parent-teacher associations, and uniform groups to look into how we can work together to benefit more school-aged children. . Our committee is looking forward to exploring this new avenue of youth services. We welcome any comments and ideas from Rotarians who have experience in this area.