Author: Jamie Weisel, 2022-23 Kiwanis Family Youth Chair

On Sunday, we hosted our annual key to college event for key club and kiwins students in the LA area. This was the first time the event was in person since 2019 due to COVID, so it was a really great experience to host the event at ucla in kerckhoff. We had around 50 students come out from divisions 13, 19 and crystal. Circle K volunteers hosted 4 informational workshops on college related topics to guide these students to succeeding in college and the application process. We then held a pizza lunch followed by a campus tour!

What was your favorite part of the event?
My favorite part of the event was presenting the professionalism and career development workshop with Leanne. We got to work together to provide some early insight on coming to college and getting started with resume building and networking. It was nice knowing that we were providing the students with an outlet to ask questions and help them get into colleges.

Author: Jaden Nguyen, 2022-23 Family Head

On October 16th, we engaged in one of many tabletops throughout the week to make different elements of care packages sent to our local middle school. For this event, we made origami to help send positivity to the children.

​My favorite part of this event was learning how to accomplish new forms of origami previously unbeknown in my stored memory. The event was one of the most paramount bonding experiences of my entire collegiate undergraduate career given that the shared trauma of struggling to fold square shaped papers helps bind people together.

Author: Jaden Nguyen, 2022-23 Family Head

On October 9th, we went and made dog toys out of old T-Shirts. It was my first time meeting some new members, and the dog toys were later donated. We ended chatting and touching base, allowing ourselves to get to know each other better while serving our community!

What was your favorite part of the event, and why?
It was a really great way to engage with service in a quick and easy way as a tabletop hosted on campus. It provided us one of a variety of options offered to us to help our community while also providing us a way to make more friends in such a large collegiate community.

Author: Jamie Weisel, 2022-23 Kiwanis Family Youth Chair

On the day depicted, a group of our essay editing volunteers got together to read and edit some of the submissions we already received early on. Personal statement reading was an on going event/program that our club held throughout October and November since the UC application was due in late November. This gave students enough time to write and submit their essays, as well as enough time for our CKI members to return the essays. All edits were done anonymously, so people would feel more comfortable giving and receiving feedback. Our volunteers were hard at work for a couple hours to ensure we could guarantee our promise of returning the college essays in 3-5 days. Overall, our club read 127 college essays and served 64 hours to do so.

​The event is meaningful because I know how expensive essay editing services are for college applications. I personally paid a couple hundred dollars just for my 4 UC essays to be read over, so it was really cool to continue this free program for our local key club seniors.

Author: Javier Nunez-Verdugo, 2022-23 Social and Spirit Chair

After our last general meeting of the summer, I held a movie night social with Kyle's help to watch"Whisper of the Heart" with my fellow members :D We spent two hours chatting and bonding while watching the movie and overall just had a good time destressing together before the start of fall quarter!

What was your favorite part of the event, and why?
​Even though it was over zoom, it was really nice being able to see everyone and just have a relaxing night hanging out virtually with the club <3

Author: Jamie Weisel, 2022-2023 Kiwanis Family Youth Chair

To follow up with our spring in person joint board training, we hosted this online version for those who could not attend previously. The CKI board attended and gave presentations and answered questions for the key clubbers and kiwins who attended. The divisions included were d19n, d19s, d13w, d13n, d13s and Crystal. We helped high school officers prepare for a successful term.

What was your favorite part of the event?
I liked meeting dedicated key club and kiwins leaders. It was inspiring to see how much they cared about improving their home clubs.

Even though the event was online, what impact did the event have on you or others?​
We were still able to reach out to local key club leaders, without them having to worry about a commute.