WELCOME TO THE MONTANA DISTRICT OF KIWANIS
Welcome to the Kiwanis web page. If you are curious about Kiwanis and would like to know about our organization, maybe I can help. To start off our story, “we are a global organization of volunteers dedicated to changing the world one child and one community at a time.” In reality, wherever you find a child in need, you will find Kiwanis helping at home and around the world.
Some of our outreach programs have started hospitals, orphanages and schools. We feed and cloth the needy, get dental, optical and medical help wherever we can--and that is only part of what we are about.
At home we have programs like Bring up Grades (BUG) which rewards children for bringing up their grades and our District Kids in Crisis Backpack Program where we fill backpacks with a variety of items depending on the need and give them to children or an organization who helps children. Whenever we hear of a child in need we are there. There are hundreds of programs that Kiwanis is involved and we are always looking for people that have the heart and are willing to help.
Kiwanis is the title of the parent organization which has several groups of dedicated people working together to reach our goals and to serve the children. These are called Service Leadership Programs. They are Circle K (college students), Key Club (high school students), Builder Club (middle school students), K-Kids (elementary school kids) and last but not least our AKTION CLUB (Adults with disabilities). Without these clubs we are hard pressed to do all of the wonderful things we have done thus far.
A few years back Kiwanis partnered with UNICEF and worked on a project to add Iodine to salt and stop Iodine Deficiency Disorder (IDD) in third world countries. It was a great success. We are now partnering with UNICIF to stop Maternal Neonatal Tetanus. This germ kills thousands of mothers and babies every year--which is unacceptable. For a dollar eighty ($1.80) we can save one mother and child. With education and the vaccine we can stop these deaths. We will never totally get rid of tetanus but we can bring it under control like we did with IDD in the rest of the world. This Project is called the KIWANIS ELIMINATE PROJECT. We are shooting for total control of this germ in the next four years.
If Kiwanis sounds like it might interest you, please let us know. There is a club near you that is willing to talk to you and may even buy you breakfast/ lunch/ dinner. If by chance there is not a club near you, maybe we can start one.
Chuck Rushing
Governor 2011-2012
cmrushing@midrivers.com
