Support STUFH at your DCON!

We recently sent out the following letter over the Governors' reflector:

To the Governors of Circle K International:

For those of you who do not know me, my name is Michael Zebrowski, and I currently serve as the Circle K International Service Ambassador to STUFH, Students Team Up to Fight Hunger.

Since its founding at Cornell University in 1999, STUFH has aided with the collection of over one million pounds of foodstuffs. This has helped contribute to STUFH’s core mission to increase the gathering of food on college campuses for two main purposes: to combat hunger and to increase awareness of the rising pervasiveness of hunger in our communities.

In order to ensure that we can do the most for this Service Partner, we are encouraging each of you to hold a food drive on behalf of STUFH at your District Convention. Through this International effort, we are hopeful that we can make a large contribution to this valued Service Partner.

If you want to know more about STUFH, please visit http://www.stufh.org/, or check out our STUFH Member Resource Guide, which has been made available in the “Service Partner” section of our International website. Please also feel free to contact me at Michael.NYCKI@gmail.com if you have any questions about this initiative.

Thank you again, and we really appreciate your support!

Yours in Service, Leadership, and Fellowship,

Michael Zebrowski
Service Ambassador to STUFH
NYCKI Empire Division Lieutenant Governor
Circle K International

BIG CHANGES FOR BOOK DRIVES FOR BETTER LIVES™

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT - BWB and you!

1. Every CKI club that ran a book drive this past semester will be able to keep the funding for their individual chapter! Funding is RETRO-ACTIVE!
   
   
2. IMPORTANT - Contact your Account Representative to verify payment information so there is no delay in your payment. Better World Books will send the payments directly to each chapter in February, 2009!
   
   
3. Clubs will receive .50 per acceptable book, $1.00 for each pre-screened/acceptable book or $1.25 for each pre-screened, acceptable book if more than 1,000 books are collected.
   
   
4. Collection/Dates: February 1 – July 31; August 1 – January 31. Books must be in the Better World Books warehouse by January 31st and July 31st. Payments are sent bi-annually in September and February.
   
   
5. For 5,000 acceptable books collected this spring/summer, Circle K International will receive $1,500 for the Leadership Academy
   
   
6. ♥ NEW! Each chapter will have access to an environmental portal that calculates the environmental impact of their drive on campus!! ♥

♥ Contact CircleK@BetterWorldBooks.com to sign on for the Spring Drive! ♥

Why?

• Approximately 800,000,000 people are illiterate….mostly women and children. We believe literacy and education is a basic human right.
• The United Nations declared 2002-2012 the Literacy Decade in an effort to improve Global Health and decrease poverty, worldwide.
• To date, our grass roots book drives at colleges and libraries have diverted more than 8,000 tons of books from landfills.

What’s involved?

• Your decision. Books for Africa, Room to Read, Worldfund, the National Center for Family Literacy, or Invisible Children
• Your leadership. Better World Books provides all supplies, incurs all costs in shipping and assigns a dedicated account representative to your club. We need you to take the lead.
• Your passion. Help break the cycle of poverty at it’s core…through education and literacy
• Be the change you want to see in the world and lead a drive!

STUFH

Hey everyone -

Some exciting news, the new STUFH Guide has finally been published. Check it out at the website, here's the link:

http://slp.kiwanis.org/CircleK/service/partners/STUFH.aspx

You can also check out the STUFH website, http://www.stufh.org. There are also two pamphlets that you can download from the site (located at http://www.stufh.org/about.html).

If you have any questions dont hesitate to ask STUFH Ambassador Mike Zebrowski

Community Service and Awareness Week

CSAW is a week to show your support for the Focusing on the Future Service Initiative. It takes place the first full week of February ending on Saturday, the International Service Day.

For this week your club should establish some goals that enable your clubs to:

• heighten campus and community awareness of CKI and the Service Initiative
• further educate club members on the Service Initiative, and motivate each member to become actively involved in related service activities
• each day should have tasks that encompass: Kiwanis Education, The Key Club Connection, Community Education, Public Awareness, Set Up Shop, and Service Activity
  

Once the week is over and your projects are complete be sure to get recognition for your club by submitting a summary of the activities that your club sponsored throughout the week (don't worry you don't need to have sponsored something everyday of the week for recognition).

For more information on CSAW check out the Service Initiative Guide

Ideas for Service Fair theme needed please

Hello everyone!

The Circle K International Convention usually features a service fair in which districts get to showcase their projects to all in attendance. In recent years, there has been a theme associated with the service fair. If you have ideas for this year's Service Fair theme, please send them to me at tracymeyer.cki@gmail.com by January 28, 2009.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Yours in friendship and service,
Tracy

Greetings from Morocco!

Hello CKI!

Hope you all are enjoying a nice break away from school, but don't forget to stay involved in service over break. I'm sure all of your clubs are planning some great service opportunities for the spring semester, too. If you ever need anything from me, don't hesitate to contact me at : rich.cki@gmail.com.

I am honored to be your new Service Ambassador for UNICEF and the Six Cents Initiative. Six Cents is so important to me, and I'm proud to be doing my part to reach our goals. Right now I am working on a good, comprehensive fundraising guide to help your clubs with lots of fun and helpful ways to raise money for this great initiative.

On a side note, I am writing to you from Morocco where I am spending the month volunteering in an orphanage with Cross Cultural Solutions. I've been updating my blog on the website I used to fundraise at http://www.supportrich.org/travelblog.htm. There's info of what I have been doing, and also pictures from my travels, too. Enjoy.

Have a great New Years everyone!

Rich

--

Rich Henderson
Service Ambassador for UNICEF and the Six Cents Initiative
Atlantic Division Lieutenant Governor
Circle K International
508.846.3968
rich.cki@gmail.com
AIM: richcki

Open a Book, Show Them the World

Service Initiative - Literacy: Open a Book, Show Them the World

Literacy is a huge problem in today's world. According to the National Center for Family Literacy:

• By age four, children who live in poor families will have heard 32 million fewer words than children living in professional families.
• One in five, or 20%, of America's children five years old and under live in poverty.
• Some 30 million adults in the United States have extremely limited literacy skills. If one teacher could teach 100 adults to read, we would need 300,000 adult education teachers to meet this need.

As Circle K'ers we are committed to help rectify this problem. We have a well established service initiative that takes place from December 1st through March 31st and a recent partnership with Better World Books. It has been proven that by exposing children to literacy at a young age are rated higher by their teachers than a randomly selected comparison group in terms of overall academic performance, motivation to learn, attendance, and likelihood of future success. So what can you and your clubs do to help?

Circle K clubs can help kids enhance their imagination and stay in school by reading with them. You can also:

• Co-sponsor a Builders or K-Kids club
• Co-sponsor an Aktion Club
• Create a library for children at a local shelter for the homeless or community center
• Implement the College Bound program in a third- to sixth-grade class to encourage students to stay in school
• Implement the Terrific Kids program at your local elementary school
• Create flash cards for children
• Implement the BUGS program at your local elementary school
• Collect books and host a book drive
• Read to students
• Mentor students
• Tutor students
• Establish book drives with Better World Books