WHAT IS KIWANIS?

What is a Kiwanian?

Kiwanis is a global organization of volunteers dedicated to changing the world, one child and one community at a time.

Kiwanis Name

The name “Kiwanis” means “we trade” or “we share our talents.” It was coined from an American Indian expression, Nunc Kee-wanis.

Kiwanians are volunteers changing the world through service to children and communities. Kiwanis members help shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, mentor the disadvantaged, and care for the sick. They develop youth as leaders, build playgrounds, raise funds for pediatric research, and much more. No problem is too big or too small. Why? Because working together, members achieve what one person cannot accomplish alone. When you give a child a chance to learn, experience, dream, and succeed, great things happen!

As Kiwanis clubs and members, we see it everyday!

Objectives of Kiwanis

• 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 practical means to form 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.

Kiwanis International History

The first Kiwanis club was organized in Detroit, Michigan, USA on January 21, 1915. A year later the Kiwanis Club of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, was chartered, and Kiwanis International grew rapidly into a leading service club in these two founding nations. In 1962, worldwide expansion was approved, and today Kiwanis clubs are active in every part of the world.

Motto
"We Build."

Number of Clubs and Members
There are more than 8,500 Kiwanis clubs with more than 315,000 members in 82 nations and geographic areas.

Women in Kiwanis
Membership was opened to women in 1987. Overall, there are now more than 51,000 women members, and 1 in 7 club presidents is a woman.

Kiwanis Youth Organizations
Kiwanis International sponsors several service clubs for young people: Circle K International has 10,800 members on 560 university and college campuses; Key Club International has 194,000 members in 4,574 high schools; and Builders Clubs have been organized in 2,000 junior high and middle schools.

Kiwanis Service

In one year, Kiwanis clubs sponsored 147,000 service projects. To do so, Kiwanians raised and spent almost $70 million and contributed 6.2 million hours of volunteer time.

Kiwanis' continuing service emphasis is called "Young Children: Priority One," which focuses on the special needs of children from prenatal development to age 5. Projects conducted as part of the "Young Children: Priority One" service emphasis involved $14.3 million and 1.3 million volunteer hours.

In 1994, Kiwanis launched its first Worldwide Service Project, a $75 million campaign in partnership with UNICEF to eliminate iodine deficiency disorders by the year 2000. Iodine deficiency is rare in areas where iodized salt is used, but in other parts of the world, IDD is the leading cause of preventable mental and physical retardation. As many as 1.5 billion people are at risk, especially young children.