Spring 2008
Students from the Rotaract Leadership Club
The Rotaract Leadership Club is a new student organization that offers leadership guidance to other student groups and is available to assist other student organizations with event planning. Based on the ideals of Rotary and putting students into action, RLC is becoming a widely recognized leadership club at CSULB.
RLC is committed to increasing its current membership roster of 10 founding members (who collectively speak 10 languages) and is looking for quality members who are willing to commit time and effort to community service projects. Perks to RLC members include having a direct connection to the 350 active members of Long Beach Rotary, which includes business owners and professionals working in government, higher education and large corporations. Long Beach Rotary is committed to providing support and a bank of ideas and advice to the members of CSULB’s Rotaract Leadership Club. Members can obtain letters of recommendation from Rotarians as well as advice for their career and educational path.
Rotaract Leadership Club activities include participating in three major events vannually. Regular events include an event to benefit the campus, another event to benefit the community and a third event to raise international awareness. Events coordinated by Rotaract students this year included the planning of Student Life and Development’s T3 conference monthly vpark clean-ups with Long Beach Rotarians and Operation Santa Claus, which raised more than $2,000 for 44 children in 10 families. The club plans to make Operation Santa Claus an annual event. This year, the club’s international awareness activity is scheduled to be held in June, when RLC members will serve as volunteer liaisons and guides at the 2008 Rotary International Convention in Los Angeles.
To fulfill the international service requirement in the future, the group hopes to sponsor a “Snowball Express to Tijuana” to support literacy. The group also hopes to collaborate with Interact, a high school program which directly feeds into CSULB’s Rotaract.
“Rotaract is service oriented, but when you are doing it, it doesn’t feel like something you have to do.” says Nate Trimmer, president and cofounder of the Rotaract Leadership Club. Trimmer encourages students to consider Rotaract. “Group members have many opportunities and the Long Beach Rotary Club provides generous funding support in exchange for student involvement with their projects.”
For information about joining the Rotaract Leadership Club, go to www.eatsociety.org/rlc/.
— Hayley Crombie is a recreation and leisure studies intern in the Lois J. Swanson Leadership Resource Center.
