What is Kiwanis?
Kiwanis is an international organization of volunteers, dedicated to improving the world, one child and one community at a time. Clubs are typically organized around a single city or geographic area, and focused on projects that address a need or issue in the surrounding community.
Impact
Service is at the heart of every Kiwanis club. Kiwanis members stage nearly 150,000 service projects, devote more than 6 million hours of service and raise nearly $100 million every year for communities, families and projects. Key Club members pitch in 12 million hours of service each year, and CKI members add another 500,000 hours. Aktion Club members donate another 92,000 hours of service every year to communities. Add it all up and that’s more than 18 million hours of service every year!
History
Kiwanis International was founded in 1915 by a group of businessmen in Detroit. In the early years, members focused on business networking but in 1919, the organization changed its focus to service—specifically service to children. Kiwanis clubs formed in communities across the United States and Canada until the 1960s when worldwide expansion was approved. Today, Kiwanis clubs are helping children thrive, prosper and grow in nearly 80 nations and geographic locations.
The name “Kiwanis” was coined from an expression in an American Indian language of the Detroit area, “Nunc Kee-wanis,” which means, “we trade.” In 1920, the motto of Kiwanis became “We Build.” It remained the motto until 2005, when members voted to change it to “serving the children of the world.”
Objects 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 enduring friendships, to render altruistic service and to build better communities.
- To cooperate in creating and maintaining that sound public opinion and high idealism which make possible the increase of righteousness, justice, patriotism and good will.