Boost member engagement with ACE tools 

Boost member engagement with ACE tools 

Oct 7, 2024 | Club building, General interest | 0 comments

If your club members seem less engaged lately, these three resources can help rebuild enthusiasm. 

By Tony Knoderer

Dwindling enthusiasm: It’s a problem that can strike even the most successful Kiwanis club. Sometimes it’s a natural result of habit or routine — the same meetings, the same projects, the same old routine. Sometimes it’s a more serious matter. 

Whatever the reason, Kiwanis International has the tools to help your club address it. In fact, a few of our Achieving Club Excellence (ACE) tools are designed to help your club’s leaders understand what members want and where they want the club to go: 

  • Member survey. The first step toward ensuring a positive club experience, this survey helps gather information that can improve the club experience for current members — and even make it more appealing for people you’re recruiting. You’ll also find a guide for survey options, results evaluations and potential solutions. 
  • Club vision. Here’s where you define what your club does and why it exists — and then create a clear vision that guides club leaders and members. The tool’s guide also provides instructions for conducting a group exercise, so everyone has a voice in the vision-making process. 
  • Celebrate success. Don’t forget the fun — or the importance — of feeling valued. People stay involved when their efforts are recognized. And club service stays special when success is celebrated. Use this tool to determine how you celebrate, who and what you recognize, and which questions your club should ask itself.

All these resources can be found on the ACE tools webpage, which includes other common concerns clubs face — and pairs them with the tools that help club leaders address them.  

Microgrants boost clubs’ community support

Microgrants boost clubs’ community support

Sep 30, 2024 | General interest, Kiwanis Children's Fund, News, Service projects | 0 comments

From July through September, smaller clubs made a big impact through the Kiwanis Children’s Fund.

By Erin Chandler

In July, August and September 2024, more clubs around the world received Kiwanis Children’s Fund microgrants for small projects that will make a big impact. These clubs are giving out books throughout their communities, providing food and emergency supplies to families and training parents of children with autism in sensory therapies. The following three projects highlight the ways Kiwanis clubs are using microgrants to advance the Kiwanis causes of education and literacy, health and nutrition, and youth leadership development. 

Health and nutrition 

Edmarc Holiday Baskets
The Kiwanis Club of Churchland, Virginia, U.S., says their members are “few in number but mighty in volunteering.” This holiday season, with help from a Kiwanis Children’s Fund microgrant, they will prove it by helping families with children in hospice care. These families may not have the time or money to shop for holiday meals and other essential items while caring for their terminally ill children. The Churchland Kiwanians will take care of the shopping with a list from Edmarc, a well-known hospice provider in their community. They will then gather with Key Club members to assemble food baskets that will bring holiday cheer in dark times.  

Education and literacy 

Adopt-a-Teacher
Sometimes the best way to support a child’s education is to support the teacher. In the Kiwanis Club of Greater Mount Laurel’s Adopt-a-Teacher project, teachers in the New Jersey, U.S., community apply for help with purchasing classroom supplies they would otherwise have to provide themselves. Club members vote on the winning application and, with help this year from a Kiwanis Children’s Fund microgrant, fulfill the entire wish list. The selected teacher also receives a year’s membership to BookSmiles, which supplies teachers with books for their classes. The club even works with BookSmiles to make sure other teachers with books on their wish lists get the titles they need.  

Youth leadership development 

Do Good Bus Trip
The Kiwanis Club of Slinger, Wisconsin, U.S., will use its Kiwanis Children’s Fund microgrant to help members of its sponsored Builders Club develop into a new generation of servant leaders. Each month, Kiwanians accompany their Builders Club members on the local volunteer-run “Do Good Bus” to Casa Guadalupe Education Center, which offers literacy support to Spanish-speaking Latino families in the area. Builders Club members read to children at the center and lead them in craft activities they have planned themselves, such as making bookmarks and holiday ornaments. They have even helped Spanish-speaking kids write letters to Santa. Grant funds will supplement Builders Club book drives and fundraisers to purchase supplies for each trip.  

How you can help 
To learn more about Kiwanis Children’s Fund microgrants, visit kiwanis.org/microgrant-program.   

If you want to help the Children’s Fund provide grants like these that reach children around the world, you can make a gift to The Possibility Project. Your club can also apply for a grant to help kids in your community today. 

Grant continues fight against tetanus

Grant continues fight against tetanus

Sep 24, 2024 | Fundraising, General interest, Kiwanis Children's Fund, Service projects | 0 comments

Kiwanis is helping UNICEF combat infant and maternal mortality around the world.

By Erin Chandler

Kiwanis International proudly continues to support UNICEF in its work to protect mothers and babies from maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNT). In July, the Kiwanis Children’s Fund approved a US$275,000 grant that will help sustain UNICEF’s efforts to eliminate MNT around the world. 

MNT is a painful and deadly disease that disproportionately exists in areas where poverty, lack of education and inadequate health infrastructure make unhygienic birth practices more common. In 2010, Kiwanis joined UNICEF’s global initiative to eliminate MNT. Thanks to the combined efforts of UNICEF, the World Health Organization, national Ministries of Health, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Kiwanis and others, neonatal tetanus deaths dropped from 215,000 in 1999 to 24,000 in 2021. Forty-nine out of the 59 countries initially assessed to have more than one infant death from tetanus per 1,000 live births have now achieved MNT elimination. 

The latest US$275,000 grant from the Children’s Fund will be used to facilitate and accelerate mass tetanus vaccination campaigns for women of reproductive age in countries such as Angola, Papua New Guinea, Afghanistan and Somalia — the countries most in need, of the 10 that have not yet eliminated MNT. Although an inexpensive vaccine to prevent MNT has existed for nearly 100 years, systemic inequities have prevented it from becoming widely available in the most vulnerable areas of the world. The Children’s Fund grant will help to right this wrong and strengthen health systems to ensure the sustainability of elimination efforts.  

This grant comes a little less than a year after a previous US$275,000 grant from the Children’s Fund, which helped fund efforts that led to the elimination of MNT in Mali and Guinea. Mali’s elimination status was confirmed in April 2024, and Guinea’s in May. 

Support for UNICEF’s fight against MNT is just one way Kiwanis has furthered the global cause of children’s health. Through The Possibility Project, the Kiwanis Children’s Fund regularly awards grants to clubs around the world — like the Kiwanis Club of Pakistan, which has provided a sustainable water source within a village in Sindh; and the Kiwanis Clubs of Third District, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., and Spalding-Christiana, Jamaica, which repaired and replaced essential kitchen equipment in homes for at-risk youth, allowing them to store and prepare nutritious meals. In June, the Children’s Fund awarded pediatric medicine support grants to help four clubs in the U.S. improve the equipment, facilities and supplies at their local medical centers.  

If your club is looking for ways to help mothers and babies in your own community, check out our tips and examples. You can also make a gift to the Children’s Fund today to make a healthier world possible for kids everywhere.