Relying on hours of community service, Key Club advisor Tara Weismantel has created new guidelines in order to improve Key Club for future years.
“We are changing things this year to be more strict on the requirements to get in by having two levels of memberships,” Weismantel said.
According to Weismantel, the club has 90 members this year.
In order to become an official member, students now have to have 20 hours of volunteer service.
“This year, we did levels. If you aren’t you can still participate in some of the volunteering to get some of your hours,” Weismantel said, “but in order to do some of the bigger and more appealing events you have to be a full member.”
The new requirement was institued due to the large number of members interested in joining Key Club,
“In years past people were allowed to join the club and then they were members of the club, and now you need 20 hours of community service in order to actually be a member of the club,” Key Club president Chaya Thomas said. “That kind of holds people accountable, we want people to join that really want to be part of the club and immerse themselves in the volunteering experience.”
One of the main goals the Key Club is striving to achieve this year is exposing students to community service and showing them that it can be done in a fun way.
Weismantel believes that the main goal of the club is to “give kids perspective” and to “make volunteering fun.”
Members have different opinions on what the main goal and purpose of Key Club is.
“I believe our main goal is definitely to give back to the community with a focus on our local community,” Thomas said.
For Key Club ICC Officer Katie McClure, “Now that I volunteer more frequently, volunteering has become a habit and definitely became more fun because we do fun activities in Key Club.”
Key Club is different from other clubs at the high school due to the flexibility and planned events at the club.
Thomas said that the “flexibility of the club itself” differentiates Key Clubs from other community service clubs at the high school.
“We don’t have a set list of events and activities that we do each year so there’s a lot of room for flexibility. We can come up with new ideas. We can reach out into the community and see where help is needed and different things like that,” Thomas said.
Thomas thinks that they’ve been able to set up “a lot of unique opportunities” because of the club’s flexibility.
Many members have said their views on community service and volunteer work changed since joining the Key Club.
According to Thomas, before joining the Key Club, she didn’t believe it could be done with a “big group.”
“I think it changed my perspective that we can organize bigger events and different activities for large groups of people,” Thomas said, “and that it can successfully work and that there are a lot of people interested as well in volunteering and giving back.”
Key Club member Brooke Wagner said that she originally joined Key Club because she has the ability to meet a lot of new people.
“This is my second year [in Key Club],” Wagner said. “Helping out is something fun and it gets me out to meet a lot of new people.”