By Melanie Petrucci, Senior Community Reporter, Community Advocate

On a recent Saturday morning, nearly two dozen young members of the Northborough Rotary’s Interact Club gathered at the Northborough Police Headquarters to pack lunches that were to be delivered to a Worcester shelter later that day.

Interact clubs are youth-based Rotary International sponsored organizations affiliated with local Rotary clubs that bring together young people ages 12-18, who are committed to service above self while having fun and learning valuable leadership skills.

This service project addresses one of the club’s initiatives which are helping communities cope with hunger, poverty and disasters.  The club completes at least two service projects each year.

Club members had to work quickly because they were packing 200 bags containing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, chips, fruit and a water bottle which were then to be delivered to the Pip Homeless Shelter in Worcester.

“The shelter in Worcester only has a capacity of about 20 but usually between 120 and 200 people eat lunch there,” explained Sravya Tanikella, Algonquin Regional High School student and Interact Club president. “The main thing we want to achieve is that being able to feed 200 people should be pretty easy for a big group like us to put together…we want to be able to give them meals that are good and everyone likes  peanut butter and jelly and we are just trying to help out however way we can.”

She added that club members donated most of the food for the project.

Pat Doyle, president of the Northborough Rotary Club, was also on hand for the event. She  noted that this project was completely organized and carried out by the Interact club members

“This is the second year that our Interact club has done this…it’s amazing to watch the kids all of a sudden realize that there is a world outside of Northborough that doesn’t have food and that many have food insecurities,” she said.

For more information about Northborough Rotary's Interact Club, contact Skip Doyle at francisedoyle@gmail.com.

This article ran originally in the November 12, 2019 issue of the Community Advocate.

Photo: Melanie Petrucci, Community Advocate.