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Carnegie’s Interact Club

By Anjali Martinez, Carnegie Vanguard High School, School Buzz Reporter | September 18, 2023

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John Nguyen and Lamson Tran (from left) of Interact Club at the CVHS club booth (Photo: @CVHS.Interact Instagram).

On August 3, over one hundred clubs at Carnegie Vanguard High School gathered around campus to host a booth in the annual club fair. Amongst the eclectic clubs, there was one that stood out in particular. Literally. Standing atop of a cafeteria table, two cabinet members held up a club sign, and yelled out phrases to get newcomers to join their club.

“Join the largest club on campus!” was one of their chants.

CVHS’s Interact club, a service based organization is affiliated with a larger community based organization – Rotary International. Rotary supports club chapters at both a local and global scale.

John Nguyen, a junior at CVHS, is president of Interact club. Having been a part of Interact for three years, he describes how his older sisters who were once Interact members shaped his leadership role.

“Just seeing how passionate my sisters were about [Interact], and how invested they were, I just wanted to see what the club was about. And here I am.”

In the 2022-23 school year, Interact raised 20,000 dollars at CVHS’s I-Fest, run and sponsored by Interact. This international festival celebrates different cultures and backgrounds at Carnegie, and all student ticket sales and funding was donated to Project Class, a non-profit organization that serves disadvantaged students in the local community,

This year as a collective, John and his fellow Interact members hope to break the 20,000 dollar mark and continue their traditions of events around the school.

Interact members John Nguyen, Elissa Merhi, and Natalie Ghannad together at a volunteering event. (Photo: @CVHS.Interact Instagram).

“Our second largest event is Operation Shoebox, where we wrap presents [consisting of] toiletries, and items for homeless people, and we send it off to the HISD police department, so they can hand them out,” John said.

Some of Interact's most popular events include I-fest, Operation Shoebox, and Gardening with the Governors. The Gardening with the Governors event is a community service project gardening and planting trees, which involves both Interact and Rotary members.

The Interact club hopes to provide a positive and encouraging environment to those interested in community service projects, and helping those in need. John believes that for those interested, Carnegie provides a well-suited environment for service projects and philanthropy.