Channeling the Holiday Spirit All Year Round

For most of us, the season of giving begins and ends with the holidays. The  Key Club challenges itself to give all year, and it already has a laundry list of things it has done.

The club has about 105 members, down from last year, but it still finds ways to get involved with the community. Just recently, members donated 2,886 pounds of food to Second Harvest Food Bank and raised $900 from a carwash for pediatric trauma prevention.

On Dec. 11, members helped refurbish local parks in Campbell, and on Dec. 18, they were busy collecting toys for the . 

The Westmont Key Club is a high school club advised by the Campbell Kiwanis Club. Key clubs strive to get high school-aged youth involved with their community while also teaching leadership skills.

As adopted in 2004, the Kiwanis International mission statement reads, "Kiwanis is a global organization of volunteers dedicated to changing the world, one child and one community at a time." The organization focuses on children, while also working toward developing future generations of leaders.

"When you judge the book by its cover, it seems like a community service organization, but really it's about leadership," says club secretary Manda Lam.

Bob Carlson is the Kiwanis adviser to the Westmont Key Club. With more than five years of advising under his belt, he, too, sees this club as more than just community service for the students.

"We try to get these kids involved in their community, working with diverse groups of people, developing leadership and getting some real life experience," he says.

Although a lot of students initially join to pad their college resumes, Carlson hopes some will take what they learn and apply it to their adult lives.

"If we even get 10 out of 100 to commit for life, then that's amazing," he says.

The large number of dedicated freshman members is just one of the unique aspects of the club. Members of the Month—Irena Xia, CarmenTsang and Caitlyn Catabay—are all freshman, but that didn't stop them from attending almost all of the Key Club events in December.

"It's really fun and easy to help out," they said in unison. "We definitely plan on joining the college-level Key Club."