Newspaper’s reader speaks up for Kiwanis

Jack White is willing, able, and ready to help a prospective member find the perfect Kiwanis club that fits his or her needs. And if that club doesn’t exist, Jack says he will build one. He’s just that dedicated.

Jack, who is an Abingdon, Virginia, Kiwanian proved his commitment to Kiwanis once again when he wrote a letter to the editor of the Bristol Herald Courier newspaper applauding Kiwanis clubs for adapting to the needs of members and prospective members.

Jack’s letter came on the heels of another letter, written to the same newspaper by the Bristol Host Lions Club president who claimed: “Civic clubs have fallen on hard times. … Many of them have lost half or more of the membership they had just 10 years ago. …The majority of remaining club members are aging and becoming unable to shoulder the great burden they carried in their younger days.”

In his letter, Jack was quick to point out to readers that Kiwanis is in fact adapting its clubs to the changing needs of society.

“People still want to serve their communities as much as in the past, but society has changed and service clubs must adapt to those changes or they will falter,” Jack wrote. “What is Kiwanis doing? We now grant our clubs the greatest flexibility. … Whatever works is OK, since the goal of Kiwanis is to serve children and our communities, not to hold particular types of meetings.”

In an interview with KIWANIS Connected, Jack stresses once again how important it is to “make Kiwanis service work for you.”

“The Kiwanis message must be that we serve children and our communities, and everything else is window dressing,” he says. “There is no one right or proper format for a Kiwanis club. While this upsets a lot of long-held ideas about our organization, we need to do this to meet the challenges, not only of the Boomers, but of the coming X and Y generations.”