Editor’s note: This is the fourth post in a new series, spotlighting the work of Hillcrest High School journalism students. All content was created and submitted by the students themselves and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Advocate. Preston Hollow editor Elizabeth Barbee reviews the pieces and occasionally edits them for clarity. Contact her at ebarbee@advocatemag.com.
Key Club hopes to grow membership
By Delaney Shi
If you’re a student at Hillcrest High School, you’ve most likely heard of Interact Club and the various service projects its members complete throughout the year. Key Club is an organization that doesn’t get as much recognition but is very similar. It’s smaller than Interact and sponsored by Kiwanis International, a coeduacational service club with chapters around the world. Throughout all of Kiwanis’ clubs each year, almost $100 million is raised and 150,000 service projects are completed.
“We pick different events throughout the year to volunteer for,” Hillcrest High School Key Club sponsor Johnathan Hall says. “[We] try to do our best to represent the school.”
The main events that Key Club has been a part of this year include: Halloween at the Dallas Zoo and the Trains at NorthPark, benefitting the Ronald McDonald House. Some future events could possibly include participating in Habitat for Humanity, working at a homeless shelter, and volunteering at the North Texas Food Bank.
“We have events planned, but those tend to be races,” Hall says. “We want to actually try to have more community involvement.”
Event attendance varies by the need of the venue. Some events need more volunteers than others. The most attendance that a Key Club event has had this year is 25 people.
Since most students hear more about Interact Club, Hall has a vision to get more incoming freshmen to join Key Club when they enter Hillcrest.
“Ideally, we would start the [student’s involvement in Key Club] in the 8th grade year in the middle of school,” Hall says. “Kiwanis is already starting a program where they are trying to get more involvement in the community and the middle schools, and so it would be an extension of ‘I was already in this club in middle school…and now I’ll just continue [with] it in high school.’ ”
Senior Tanisha Rimmer, the president of Key Club, has a lot on her plate as the leader of the organization. Her duties include finding events for the group to participate in, keeping everything organized, and being active in the club. She became involved in the organization because she is a part of the girls’ soccer team and Hall is the head coach.
“By participating in Key Club, I get to know more people in Dallas and become familiar with their communities,” Rimmer says. “I also get to experience different situations that people who are less fortunate go through. It is way more fun than I thought it would be just because of all the people you meet and the conversations you get to have.”
To make the Key Club a more prominent organization in Hillcrest, the organization needs more people to join so it can volunteer at bigger events and serve more people around the community. Expanding its audience has been one of the main goals of the Key Club this year.
“More people should join, [it] helps you get more people involved in the community,” Rimmer says. “You create more friends, and it looks really good on college applications.”
