In a move to enhance its longstanding focus on youth and education, the Hopkinsville Rotary Club has introduced a new leadership role to coordinate and support its student-based initiatives.
“Well, since our club is so focused on youth and education, we wanted to create a position that would help with all of our educational initiatives,” said Brett Pritchett, who now serves as the club’s Rotary Youth Liaison. “The Rotary Youth Liaison was created to help with being a point of contact between us and Hopkinsville Community College with the Rotary Scholars Program, but to also be a liaison with our school systems for their school-based clubs.”
The liaison role also ties into the club’s signature fundraising event.
“And to also be a point person for all of our youth efforts around our annual auction, since the auction’s focus is to help fund the Rotary Scholars Program but also a lot of our foundation’s initiatives in the community around youth and education,” Pritchett said.
The club oversees several service organizations for students, including Early Act and Interact.
“Early Act is for elementary school,” Pritchett said. “We currently have three schools, Crofton Elementary, Indian Hills Elementary, and South Christian Elementary that have Early Act clubs. And then Interact is for middle and high school.”
Participation spans both public and private schools in the area.
“Currently our private schools have focused on the high schools, so Heritage Christian Academy and University Heights Academy, while St. Peter and Paul has done middle school along with Hopkinsville Middle School and Christian County Middle School,” he said.
Pritchett said the club is also working to include students who attend school virtually.
“The Virtual Learning Academy, we wanted to make sure those students were involved in organizations that could promote service that they could also use on their scholarship applications to show community involvement,” he said. “So we have a sponsor that’s been identified who’s going to be our VLA sponsor for Interact.”
He added that families within the club are already playing a role in launching the new effort.
“And we do have a couple of Rotarians whose children are also in the VLA that are going to be a part of it,” Pritchett said. “So we’re really excited.”
At the core of the club’s youth outreach is the Rotary motto — one Pritchett believes carries lifelong meaning.
“Rotary’s motto is service above self,” he said. “And that’s a lesson that translates as a kid, as a teenager, in young adulthood, and then all the way through senior citizen age. Service above self just means that you figure out ways to put other people ahead of you.”
He added, “And when you do that, you make the community that you live in a better place, and you improve your own character as well. And we want to make sure that our young people, through our educational initiatives, through their ability to pursue education, but also to pursue service, understand that lesson and make it a part of their everyday life.”
