Key Leader celebrates success in first year

The facilitators are “awesome”—even “wicked awesome.” The sessions are “extremely helpful,” “motivating,” and “fun and useful.” The overall experience is “amazing.”

And those are just a few of the overwhelmingly positive remarks made by students and adult volunteers who participated in Key Leader events this past year. In fact, the program quickly proved popular. In its first year, more than 930 teenagers and young adults attended Key Leader events at 34 sites. As a result, events expanded to almost every United States district, more dates were added, a session is available in Canada, and plans are under way to take Key Leader into Panama, Malaysia, and Finland.

But despite Key Leader’s inaugural success and rave reviews, the program won’t rest on its laurels.

“As solid as we think we are, we’re going to continue to improve, involve more people and new locations, and look to an even better 2006 Key Leader season,” says Key Leader director Richard “Dick” Peterson.

Dick stresses Key Leader continues to need volunteers at event sites and overall Kiwanis club support.

“We’ve invited every Kiwanis club to participate, and we hope every club has budgeted to assist students who want to attend a Key Leader event,” he says, noting that the program is open to all students, and participants need not be members of Key Club.

“Key Leader is such a simple way to get young people involved in service leadership and lay the foundation for the next generation of service-minded adults and leaders who will change the world. This most certainly is a program Kiwanians should stand behind and support.”

Dick says he is encouraged by the number of Kiwanians who have visited Key Leader events and, because of what they experienced, want to become involved in the program.

“A lot of work is done outside the International Office to produce these events, and we rely on many volunteers,” he says. “We challenge every Kiwanis club to participate in Key Leader by promoting the program, financially assisting students who wish to attend, and/or volunteering to help at an event site.”

And, as far as improving the program in the future, veteran Key Leader attendees had this advice:

“Have it be longer!” and “Get more people to come. This is an amazing program that should be experienced by all leaders.”