Kiwanis: Changing the Future One Child at a Time

Kiwanis is an organization that spans the globe. It consists of volunteers dedicated to changing the world, one child and community at a time. The philosophy of the children being the Earth's future is not a new one, but Kiwanis has built a very large network of about 8,000 clubs in 96 different countries. With more than 260,000 adult member and around 320,000 youth members, Kiwanis has become an impressive organization. The mission of Kiwanis is "To Serve Children of the World", and with this simple mission Kiwanis sponsors nearly 150,000 service projects and on a whole raises more than 107 million dollars, while member alone contribute more than 80 million towards the global elimination of IDD. IDD or iodine deficiency disorders are currently the leading cause of mental retardation globally.

Kiwanis has some simple objectives, which are:

To give primacy to the human and spiritual, rather than to the material values of life.

To encourage the daily living of the Golden Rule in all human relationships.

To promote the adoption and the application of higher social, business, and professional standards

To develop, by precept and example, a more intelligent, aggressive, and serviceable citizenship.

To provide, through Kiwanis clubs, a piratical means to form enduring friendships, to render altruistic service, and to build better communities.

To cooperate in creating and maintaining that sound public opinion and high idealism, which makes possible the increase of righteousness, justice, patriotism, and goodwill.

The idea is that through these objectives Kiwanis will be able to become the World's premier organization engaging adult and youth volunteers to improve the quality of life globally. While this seems to be a very large goal, Kiwanis seems to be heading in the right direction.

Kiwanis was originally started for business networking reasons in 1915. With all of the members focusing on serving the needs of the poor, in 1919 the organization officially changed its focus from business networking to service. Then in 1916 a Kiwanis group was started in Hamilton, Ontario which made Kiwanis an international organization. Since then they have never changed their focus from its goal of service. Once again in 1962 Kiwanis was spread globally once expansion was approved. The last milestone for Kiwanis was in 1987 when the once all male group after a lot of debate allowed female membership.

While I was visiting the Kiwanis club, I was greeted very nicely even though I was a sit in on a paid membership meeting. Since their goal is service they had only minimal things to talk about when it came to close door members only events. The other 75 percent of the meeting was covering service projects within the community, who was going to them to make sure there was support, and bringing up new projects that they were looking to adopt. While the membership for Kiwanis can be steep at $77.50 for membership and roster, and another $185.00 quarterly, with a total of $740.00 yearly Kiwanis is not the cheapest organization but the level of community involvement and amount of support that is achieved with these funds is impressive. I learned that even though Kiwanis is mostly comprised of the higher society of a community, because of its membership fees, they are anything but self centered. They are so focused on community improvement and changing the future by effecting the children of today that they will take full days off work at highly lucrative positions to perform their Kiwanis promises, and contribute to the communities. While these community leaders are a select few it does also point out the lack of caring of some of the local businessmen and women that can more than participate in Kiwanis but refuse to because they feel that the membership fees are to much to offset the help that they could provide. There was some mention from the members of Kiwanis that the membership numbers of Kiwanis across the globe have been decreasing. Many of the members speculated that the tight economy was to blame, but over all the main new memberships were between 50 and 60 years old. They also stressed the importance of getting younger members involved, even thought cost is a major issue when in an upstart family.

While many things are changing in the world for the better and may organizations strive to make their difference, Kiwanis is no different, instead of focusing on simply the poor or the homeless they have chosen to focus on the children which I believe is the best thing to do. While focusing on the poor of homeless or other great causes are very important the children are truly the future and may possibly be the one thing that if we influence correctly will actually have a first hand effect on the future of this planet. Just as teachers are investing knowledge in the children for the future, Kiwanis is investing many things from the community to the children of tomorrow, from the activities to the Thanksgiving events, they are influencing the children with non material life lessons that will ultimately have a very large effect on the society of the future.