In Greenwood, Indiana, Aktion Club serves side-by-side with the Kiwanis family, including K-Kids and Builders Club.

Aktion Club’s mission: To provide these adults an opportunity to develop initiative and leadership skills. To serve their community. To be integrated into society. To demonstrate the dignity and value of citizens living with disabilities.

Feature

A call to Aktion

The tide of service has changed. Those who once were helped now are the helpers

By Shanna Mooney

“It is our belief that everyone deserves to take part and contribute to their community,” says Eve Pressnell-Moore, a member of the Kiwanis Club of Greenwood, Indiana, and the Gateway Services Aktion Club advisor. “Aktion Club gives to persons with disabilities the opportunity to give back to their community with service projects, hold offices, and take part in a larger organization, to make decisions for their own lives, and to have social opportunities that may not otherwise be available.”

For those reasons, Aktion Club, which is a community-service group of adults who are developmentally impaired, is invaluable. It is also the newest—and one of the fastest growing—Kiwanis International Service Leadership Programs.

Eve is keenly aware of Aktion Club’s importance because not only does she volunteer through Kiwanis with Aktion Club, but she also works at Gateway Services, a nonprofit organization for adults with disabilities. (Aktion clubs are co-sponsored by a Kiwanis club or division and an agency that serves people who have disabilities. For more information on sponsorship or building an Aktion Club, go online to www.aktionclub.org.)

“Aktion Club is important because it allows inclusion and recognizes individuals’ needs … folks who have disabilities are given the same opportunities as every other club member,” she says. “It is something over which folks can take ownership and responsibility.”

And that isn’t something Aktion Club members take lightly.

“I have learned that helping others in Aktion Club doesn’t just happen,” says Beth Santore, a member of the Aktion Club of Scranton, Pennsylvania. “It takes organization and leadership to make it work. I’m glad I have the opportunity to be a part of this program. It makes me feel good about myself. … By doing something that benefits someone else, I feel glad that I can make difference in someone else’s life.”

“What can a person with a disability do in a service organization? The answer is anything you or I can do,” Mel Dunlap, a member of the Kiwanis Club of Elmira, New York, told the Star-Gazette newspaper.

As proof, the newly formed Aktion Club of Elmira, New York, is working through a laundry list of service projects: food bank collections, back pack program, making dog biscuits for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, collecting donations at a Salvation Army kettle drive, picking up litter during a riverfront clean up, community kitchen to feed the hungry, and more.

“(The members) came up with three pages of things they want to do,” Mel says. Several projects are checked off the list, many are in the works, and Mel has no doubt the other goals also will be accomplished.

According to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Kiwanian Bruce Berven, an Aktion Club dispenses benefits in three directions: to its members, Kiwanians, and the community.

Aktion members, he explains, have fun working together with their peers.

Kiwanians feel the pride of sponsorship. “We are repaid many times over by the joy and excitement of the Aktion Club members,” says Bruce, who has worked with disability horse riding programs since the mid-1980s and building Aktion Clubs for the past five years. “One of my ‘Kiwanis Moments’ was at a karaoke night watching a 40-plus-year-old woman, standing with her father and our club president, singing Green, Green Grass of Home. She had a huge smile and was humming, because she cannot speak. She received an enthusiastic ovation from her peers.”

And the community gains the benefits of an Aktion Club’s service and along with a good dose of awareness.

Take, for example, the Aktion Club Theatre of Mankato, Minnesota. Its motto: “Where people, art, and community partner for a brighter and more inclusive future for all.” This club started as a theatre group because of a need.

Members of the Aktion Club Theatre of Mankato, Minnesota, perform Calling Names on the Wind.

The benefits of Aktion Club An Aktion Club can benefit its members in many ways through service and recreational events. These activities enable the members to: Participate in the active life of the community. Provide an opportunity to contribute to the community. Develop mechanical, creative, and intellectual abilities. Develop social interaction awareness Improve self-esteem Develop leadership skills Achieve personal and service goals

At about the time Mankato Kiwanis club members began talking about opening an Aktion Club, an advocacy group was seeking to create a theater group for persons who have disabilities. The two plans intersected, resulting in the formation of the Aktion Club Theatre of Mankato. It wasn’t long before the Aktion Club members became a force of change in Minnesota.

Across the state, more than 12,000 persons are buried in institution cemeteries with only a number to identify each resting place. A group of self-advocates—persons who have disabilities and promote disabilities issues—wanted to remember the dead in a way filled with dignity. By working with the Minnesota legislature and raising funds, the advocates began replacing the numbered gravestones with markers etched with the names of the deceased.

To raise awareness for the cause, the Aktion Club performed a long-overdue memorial.

“In a performance titled Calling Names on the Wind, Aktion Club narrators spoke some of the names of those receiving new grave markers,” says Mankato Kiwanian Wilbur Neushwander-Frink, regional manager of The Arc of Minnesota Southwest, which provides advocacy and support for people with developmental disabilities. “We used rhythm instruments and masks, which each actor hand made. It was a very moving experience!”

No matter the project, no matter who is doing the work behind the project, no matter of ability or disability: In Aktion Club, the point is that people are making others’ lives better.

“The population (of persons who have disabilities) so often is seen in a different light than the other members of a society,” says Greenwood Kiwanian Eve Pressnell-Moore. “We have to remember that we are all people who need each other in order to be successful in life. Aktion Club brings different age groups, beliefs, and people together to work toward the same common goal who otherwise may never cross paths in this lifetime. It has been a wonderful experience to watch them change lives together.”