Riverview

Over the summer our club trys to stay very active in volunteering our time to the local community. Every year we thankfully have a great opportunity to do so without local Greek Food Festival held at and by the Greek Orthodox Church Located in Oakmont. Key Clubbers are asked to help out with preparing food, handling money, and helping to set-up and clean as well. While particating the people in charge of this major event allows they Key Clubbers to do their jobs with friends if asked, so that they have fun while giving back to their community. This wonderful event has been a great success in getting our clubs name out to other local businesses and organizations that also may need some future volunteer work done for them.

Freeport

Although school was out for the summer, Freeport Key Club was busy with numerous, fun events for the past three months.  Our largest event held this summer was called “Kids Camp” held at our local school, Buffalo Elementary.  The day started out with the kids filing in at ten o’clock and coloring their own water bottle holders, making name cards, and filling out raffle tickets for three different prizes.  An outdoor track meet was held as the first major event of the day.  The kids participated in a ‘bear crawl’ and a ‘crab walk’ among other relay races.  Next came snack time with coloring, paper airplanes, and temporary tattoos!  Some of the kids went back outside and played on the play equipment before the event of water balloon volleyball.  This was followed by lunch and more fun activities such as making bracelets, and making a few different things for Rosebrook (local nursing home) to teach the kids that it is fun to help others.  The day was a huge success as the kids had fun, the Key Club members had fun, and the most important part was donating all the crafts and ‘goody bags’ to the elderly at Rosebrook.  The Freeport Key Club hopes to make this an annual event each summer to bring back the kids for a fun filled day mixed with charity work.

Although school was out for the summer, Freeport Key Club was busy with numerous, fun events for the past three months.  Our largest event held this summer was called “Kids Camp” held at our local school, Buffalo Elementary.  The day started out with the kids filing in at ten o’clock and coloring their own water bottle holders, making name cards, and filling out raffle tickets for three different prizes.  An outdoor track meet was held as the first major event of the day.  The kids participated in a ‘bear crawl’ and a ‘crab walk’ among other relay races.  Next came snack time with coloring, paper airplanes, and temporary tattoos!  Some of the kids went back outside and played on the play equipment before the event of water balloon volleyball.  This was followed by lunch and more fun activities such as making bracelets, and making a few different things for Rosebrook (local nursing home) to teach the kids that it is fun to help others.  The day was a huge success as the kids had fun, the Key Club members had fun, and the most important part was donating all the crafts and ‘goody bags’ to the elderly at Rosebrook.  The Freeport Key Club hopes to make this an annual event each summer to bring back the kids for a fun filled day mixed with charity work.

Reynolds

On August 15th-19th future RES kindergarteners gathered up their gear, and headed off to school for a weeklong Camp. As always the RHS Key Club lends a helping hand in getting the “little guys” of the district off to a good start. Beginning the day, Key Clubbers help the kindergartens and parents find their way to the correct classes and get situated. Typically, the Key Clubbers help with small jobs that the teachers have for them. Making name tags, handing out folders, any type of an odd job. One of the cool things that the Key Clubbers get to do is ride the bus around the school district with the kindergarteners to get a feel for what riding the bus will be like for them. Over all Kindergarten Camp is a fun, entertaining way for RHS Key Clubbers to get service hours.

South Western

Over the summer, the South Western Key Club did not take off from serving our home, school, and community. During the summer there comes a string of local fireman's carnivals that need Key Clubbers to help. During a local carnival, we were asked to help at the food stands in selling, preparing, and cleaning. We had twenty-two people serve throughout the week-long event. We were able to serve for 129 total hours. The firemen that ran the carnival were very gracious that they could have so many teenagers take time out of their summer vacations to help them out. We hope that they will ask us to come back and help out next year. The Key Clubbers really enjoyed working there, and when they were done working, they got to hang out at the carnival. This was a great kick-off to hopefully a great year for the South Western Key Club.

Hatboro-Horsham

For most students, the final day of the school year involves booking it as far away from the halls singing, ‘No more teachers, no more books!’. However, the Hatboro-Horsham Senior High School Key Club returned to Hatters Stadium for a 24 hour camp-out this summer for the 6^th Annual Eastern Montgomery Country Relay for Life 24 Hour Walk. At this event, members kept a walker on the track at all times to walk in honor and memory of cancer patients that, due to their illness, were unable to walk for themselves. Considering Key Club was the largest team at the entire event – 35 registered members! – this task required a great deal of scheduling by team co-captains Carly Lyon and Carley Grow (known as ‘C Squared’ ) and team chaperone and club advisor Mrs. Terry Morissette. After a successful car wash despite overcast skies and water bottle sales at school events, the HH Key Club team raised $3,500 for donate towards life-saving research that will create less cancer and more birthdays for patients. After decking out our campsite with all-American streamers, posters, flags, and a 6 foot tall inflatable Uncle Sam for the ‘Holidays’ event theme, Key Clubbers got to work selling numerous colored ribbon pins, crafty pipe-cleaner daisy bouquets, and generously donated baked goods to walkers on the track. By the end of the event, an additional $1,000 was raised – bringing our total to approximately $4,500. A local blog, the Horsham Patch, interviewed and photographed team co-captain/club President Carly Lyon and club Treasurer Dominique Saturno as they sold ribbon pins and created daisy bouquets, as published here: http://horsham.patch.com/articles/feet-forward-for-a-cause. This was the most successful year to date for HH Key Club’s Relay for Life team, and there is much hope for opportunities next year to further aid in the battle against cancer.

Wissahickon

Each year, after a long nine months of school, summer arrives. The break allows for vacation, fun, and celebration. The day that perhaps best personifies these qualities is Independence Day. When July 4 comes around, it seems like everyone is eager to participate in festivities, and the Wissahickon Key Club is happy to help.

The Ambler Kiwanis Club hosts the annual Kiwanis Carnival the weekend of July 4. There are rides, games, and lots of food. On the Friday of the carnival, this year it was July 1, there is the traditional firework extravaganza. The event is held at Wissahickon High School, and so, this July, our key club members took time off from their summer break to return to school to keep order at the carnival.

On the busiest day of the event, Friday, the fireworks draw a huge crowd, and community members often have difficulty finding parking spots. Our volunteers spent hours directing cars to park on the school’s front yard. This may seem like an insignificant task, but cars come in droves and the makeshift parking lot is really a lawn with no designated parking spots. The Wissahickon Key Club volunteers allowed the carnival to run smoothly and the crowd to enjoy the fireworks.

Loyalsock

Since the Little League World Series takes place in our hometown, Williamsport, PA., Loyalsock Key Club volunteers every year by selling the official program. Each program is sold for five dollars and for every one the club sells, one dollar of the profit goes towards many charities we support, such as The Ronald McDonald House. For those who don't know, Little League is a ten-day competition in which teams from all over the world come to Williamsport to compete. We had about ten key clubbers volunteer and our local Kiwanis also joined this year. Our advisor, Miss Beck, picks a manager each year to help her out. This year Dan Hamm held that position, along with Alexa Martin as the assistant manager. It was a great success and we hope to keep doing it every year.

Bradford

During the past summer months the Bradford Area High School Key Club has helped out with many events. In the past month of August, our club helped out with the Italian Festival that takes place every year in Bradford. As a local community service club we volunteered our services to help vendors cut bread for various sandwiches that were sold, and we also helped count vender tickets. The Italian Festival festivities occurred for three days: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Festival has been occurring in Bradford for over 20 years and the Key Club has helped out in the last few. We originally got involved when the Italian Festival Volunteer Coordinator called for some extra help with various vendors and ticket counting (also with the bread cutting). The Bradford Italian Club was who we volunteered for. Overall, the weekend was successful and productive with over 40 service hours achieved.  

Great Valley

One project we did this month was "Kiss a Senior Goodbye." Kiss a Senior Goodbye is a project we do so that underclassmen can fill out a card for a senior that is graduating, and we attach Hershey Kisses to the card and deliver them to the seniors before graduation. It's a fun project for us to do because we get a good turn out and it's one of the last things that we can do to wish our seniors a good future as they prepare to leave Great Valley. We raised a good amount of money and got together in order to put together the kisses with the cards that the students filled out. The seniors were overjoyed to receive them in their homerooms and couldn't stop talking about how many they got. It is a good tradition that our Key Club has continued to participate in for many years.

Danville

During the last three months, Danville Key Club has participated in several events. Several members of our club took part in helping their church with Vacation bible school. Our club made such an impact on the community by helping the children that attended Vacation Bible School. We took part in helping with story time, games, crafts, and snack time. By helping our churches with VBS this provided a safe and educational time to spend learning about God and making new friends and catching up with their old friends. Without the help that we provided them, there is no way that they could have pulled off such a great experience for the children of the community.

Another activity that our club took part of is volunteering to answer phones at the Children’s Miracle Network Telethon at Janet Weis Children’s Hospital in Danville, Pa in June. Volunteering involved answering phones so that we could take the donations that people were making to the Children’s Miracle Network. Being a part of this experience and helping so many little children that are in desperate need of money to pay for their medical bills and so that the children’s hospital can continue doing research to find the cure for several different kinds of childhood cancer.

Downingtown East

This past month, the members of the Key Club of Downingtown East put together a recruting campaign to persuade incoming freshmen to join Key Club. Because the club was predominantly made up of upperclassmen last year, the officers realized that it was vital to put toegher a freshmen recruiting campaign to save membership and keep the club in order and have more enthusiastic members. While this isn't necessarily a community service project, we feel that because we are investing our time into recruiting others to invest their time into the community, it is an acceptable form of community service. The members downloaded the Key  Club informational video online and played it via laptop to the passing freshmen. The members also put together a table (where the laptop say on a continuous loop), with candy to attract the freshmen to the table. Of course, a Key Club recruiting table could not be complete without three enthusiastic members, one a former officer, and two whom are extremely active. A huge key club poster hung from the table to let freshmen know who we are. We hope to see positive results from the second step of our three part campaign.

Governor Mifflin

Seven members of our Key Club teamed up with students from Hamburg High School and traveled to Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico for our annual Service Learning Trip. We volunteered at Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, a no -kill shelter located in Utah that takes in almost every animal in need. They keep exotic and common birds, cats, dogs, horses, pot-bellies pigs, bunnies, and “wild friends,” a special part of the sanctuary where they rehabilitate wild animals like hawks and coyotes for re-release into the wild. We mostly helped out by cleaning out cages and scooping waste. Despite this, we got to socialize with many of the animals. We spent hours just petting the dogs and cats, feeding the bunnies, talking to the parrots, playing with the pigs, and watching training demonstrations with the horses. It was awesome seeing the enthusiasm of every staff member there. They were all so passionate about their jobs and what they were doing to better the lives of the animals, which was such an inspiration to all of us.  While we were in the area, we took advantage of our free hours and got to learn more about our country and experience breath-taking views at places like the Grand Canyon and Chaco Canyon. We learned so much about the culture of the Native Americans living in the area and even more about our own culture as Americans. We even grew closer as a group through fireside talks and long hikes together. It was an awesome experience and we can’t wait until next year!

Abington

This month over 5O key Club members served our school by acting as Abington Ambassadors- mentors and guides for the incoming sophomores, class of 2014!  Members of the KC executive board selected KC members to participate- assisting the new guidance counselor.  Volunteers were contacted, trained, and on 4 consecutive school days served as mentors/guides for these 9th graders, who attended classes with the key Clubbers.  Each day there was one AM session, and one PM session…9th graders got to see key Clubbers in action, and saw the prestige they have in our school…hopefully encouraging these kids to join KC in September, 2011.

Cumberland Valley

Within the last month, our club hasn’t really been active due to the fact that our members were enjoying their summer vacations.  However, our board has met up a couple of times this month with our advisors in order to get organized for the new school year.  So far we have discussed the basic issues revolving Key Club such as our rules, club fees, this year’s t-shirt design, and our yearly events.  This year we are hoping that we can achieve a lot more than our previous years.  In order for this to occur, our board has come up with various ideas that we believe will change the way our Key Club runs forever.  First, every person on our board of fifteen has to create their own committee in which they support a certain charity, topic, or community service.  For example, our committees range from ending hunger in the world, volunteering at retirement homes, to raising money for children in Africa.  These committees will provide our members with many opportunities to receive hours throughout the year; therefore, our club will always be active.  Besides that, our club is becoming more technologically advanced this year due to our facebook page, online sign-in sheets, and our school webpage.  These advancements will make things such as recording hours and advertising events much easier for our board members.  In addition, it will make it easier for our members to contact us if necessary.  Therefore, Cumberland Valley Key Club will have an amazing year due to our new polices, our desire to make a difference in the world, and our willingness to help.

North Allegheny Intermediate

Every summer, local communities, schools, and colleges in 21 countries host Relay for Life events.  This overnight fundraising event for the American Cancer Society gives people the opportunity to celebrate the lives of cancer survivors, remember loved ones that have died from the disease, and unite the community in fighting back.

For the second year in a row, a Relay for Life event was hosted at North Allegheny Intermediate High School.  The 20-hour event was held overnight and featured a survivors lap, luminary ceremony, and fundraising activities for the American Cancer Society.  There were also games, concessions, music, dancing, and many other family-oriented activities.

For the first time, nine members of the North Allegheny Key Club formed a team of their own.  The team started planning and fundraising for the event weeks in advance.  They held lemonade and cookie stands, sold homemade keychains and bracelets, and made costumes and banners with the theme of superheroes-“We don’t fight crime, we fight cancer!”  Seven team members came to the event and four stayed overnight.  In total, the team raised $1,233 for the American Cancer Society, and won the award for best team spirit!

The entire North Allegheny event was a huge success.  There were 154 participants, and many of them stayed the whole 24 hours.  It was only North Allegheny’s second year hosting a Relay for Life, but the event raised over $17,000 for the American Cancer Society.  Our key club can’t wait for next year’s Relay, and we have even higher hopes for our team!