THE DIGITAL DRAGON HSMSE Key Club
February 2019 Volume 2 Issue 7
I pledge... on my honor, to uphold the objects of Key Club International; to build my home, school, and community; to serve my nation and God; and combat all forces which tend to undermine these institutions.
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EDITOR'S MESSAGE HEY KEY CLUB!
I can't believe it's already February; a whole eleven months has just passed by in what felt like the blink of an eye! The day I got elected as your editor is still a clear memory in my mind, and I'm already here, with the penultimate issue of The Digital Dragon. But enough about my sappiness; February has been a big time for our club! From finally hosting elections (which had gotten rescheduled twice), to finalizing the design for the 20192020 service year hoodies, our board is finally getting ready to pass on our
duties to the next board members. The end of the service year might be coming up very soon, but our hard work shouldn't stop here. There's still a great deal of stuff to do! Leadership Training Conference (LTC) is coming up in a month, our members are working hard to prepare, such as finishing up the scrapbook. And beyond just preparing for LTC, I hope we end our last month of the 2018-2019 service year on a good note!
ANGELO LONTOK EDITOR
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 3
Introduction Editor's Message Table of Contents
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information
Board & Heads Club Organization Club Goals Service Project Your Role Committees
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events
Events Overview Firecracker Festival February Divisional Chinatown Parade Feeding the Homeless NYCS Teaching Assistant Future Events
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Closing
Announcements Stay Updated
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p. 14
p. 15
p. 18
p. 20
p. 22
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executive board President
vice President secretary Linna Cheung lcheung1302@gmail.com
Mengfan Wang mengfanwang724@gmail.com
treasurer
editor
webmaster
William Leung 21isolic@gmail.com
Julie Li julie.li3502224@gmail.com
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Angelo Lontok anelonto@gmail.com
Kiln Chen kilnchen02@gmail.com
committee heads visual arts Mia Akhter ztakhter-20@hsmse.org
events
Hassaan Qaiser fashionsense1003@gmail.com
Aaron Das Aiko Gerra aaron.das1072@gmail.com alydiagerra@gmail.com
Laura Song lauraws1234@gmail.com
Luis Pagan stemluis@gmail.com
Karen Wu elizabethwu0514@gmail.com
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how does key club work?
Key Club functions like an inverted pyramid, so those in higher positions (such as the members of the International board) work to serve those in lower positions (such as members)!
CLUB
DISTRICT
Each Key Club is hosted at a different high school. This one, of course, is hosted by HSMSE! Meetings are held every other Tuesday in room 103. Stay tuned for updates in the morning announcements.
The 29 divisions of New York make up New York District Key Club. Each Key Club district is led by a governor and has its own executive board. The governor for the New York district is Erica Swirsky. All the clubs in the district meet up once a year in March at the Leadership Training Conference (LTC) in Albany.
DIVISION The different Key Clubs throughout Manhattan and the Bronx form Division 11. Each division is lead by a Lieutenant Governor and has its own executive board. The LTG for this division is Mara Yella. All the clubs in the division meet up about once a month at a divisional, which is held at a different school each time.
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INTERNATIONAL All the Key Clubs around the world span five different continents and form Key Club International. It is led by International President Emily Rice. Key Club international meets up annually at the International Convention (ICON).
club goals Service gOAL
1,500 HOURS
FUNDS gOAL
$1,000
SERVICE BEST BUDDIES PROJECT INTERNATIONAL 9
WHAT IS BEST BUDDIES INTERNATIONAL?
Every service year, our club chooses an organization to support, and for the 20182019 service year, we chose Best Buddies International! This nonprofit's goal is to help out those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD).
HOW DOES BEST BUDDIES HELP OUT THOSE WITH IDD? This organization's 3 Program Pillars are One-to-One Friendships, Integrated Employment, and Leadership Development. Best Buddies creates mentorships and friendships for those with IDD, helping enjoy a better quality of life. In addition, Best Buddies also
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promotes both people with and without IDD to be advocates for those with IDD, helping reduce societal stigma and gain increased rights.
HOW WILL HSMSE KEY CLUB SUPPORT BEST BUDDIES? It's no secret that our club hosts many fundraisers! While some of them do go to costs of running the club, such as to pay for LTC and making the scrapbook for LTC, we will donate much of our proceeds to Best Buddies, supporting their cause financially.
What are Key Club's core values? CARING LEADERSHIP INCLUSIVENESS CHARACTER-BUILDING
How can our club help you? Points are given for your work. You can get points doing things like going to meetings, divisionals, and events, helping out in committees, and more. Every 10 points counts as 1 hour of volunteering. HSMSE requires 200 hours of community service — that's 2000 points! Information on our points system can be found on our website. Key Club is more than just hours, though. Being part of the club is great for personal development along our core values!
How can you help our club? There's lots of opportunities to move up and do more for our club! Even new members can do things like being project leader for events, joining committees, and later even be a committee head or run for board! Project leaders are responsible for taking attendance, taking pictures, and writing a scrapbook caption and a newsletter article. There's two committees. Events works to find volunteering events, plan fundraisers, and promote events and fundraisers on Facebook. Visual Arts makes posters to promote our fundraisers and work on our annual scrapbook for LTC. And helping the club helps you too; project leaders and committee heads get extra hours!
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our committees
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Visual Arts
Events
The Visual Arts Committee is in charge of making and posting awesome looking posters to persuade people to go to events. The committee is also in charge of making cute Key Club merchandise for club members to buy to bring in money! But most importantly, the biggest part of Visual Arts Committee is making the yearly scrapbook for LTC. The scrapbook showcases the beautiful events of the year, and may even win an award! You will be able to use your imagination and creative juices to make something beautiful that we can all be proud of!
The Events Committee's duties can be summarized into three topics: events, fundraisers, and outreach. Most importantly, this committee is in charge of finding fun events for everyone in the club to go to. But the committee is also in charge of creating amazing and successful fundraisers that raise money for charities and our clubs, the the assistance of Julie Li, our Treasurer and the rest of the board. You will be reaching out to organizations in order to host fundraisers, and also make forms and post on the Facebook page for members to sign up for events.
PAST EVENTS 2.5 February Divisional 2.12 Chinatown Parade 2.17 Feeding the Homeless 2.17 Firecracker Festival
RECURRING EVENTS Saturdays NYCS Teaching Assistant Weekends Meals on Heels
Remember, if you want your writing and photos featured in The Digital Dragon, sign up to be a project leader!
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Firecracker Festival BY JACK LEHMAN MEMBER
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On this day off from school, I was excited to partake in an inter-club event that helped support the thriving presence of Chinese culture in New York City. I tried to meet up with other people that were also volunteering beforehand, but all three of us were running late to the festival! Still, only about a dozen people were at the park when I first arrived, but more people started showing up right after. We started by removing all the necessary materials from a large truck, which included chairs, tables and folded-up tents, then we set up around the entrance. The festival started at ten, so we had time to walk around, explore the different company tents & and buy some "Party Poppers" and throw them at
each other. The fair itself was very entertaining; there were a number of things to do from getting things from the tents (I got two free movie tickets!) to watching the explosion of fireworks on the center-stage. After a few more hours and a lunch break, the fair started winding down. During such time, we all pitched in the best we could to clean up what seemed like tons of confetti and garbage scattered all across the playground. While that was tedious, the full event was filled with interesting elements of Chinese culture, like music and calligraphy, that I hadn't been exposed to beforehand. For this, I thank the Better Chinatown Organization for their amazing festival and look forward to working with them in the years to come.
February Divisional
It's like our division has bad luck; every time we have a divisional we always have awful weather! But that doesn't stop our dedicated Key Clubbers. Even though it was snowing and after-school activities at HSMSE were cancelled, thirteen of us were still willing to come, alongside so many members from other clubs. At the division, we heard updates from Mara, other clubs were promoting their fundraisers, and we sold crafts and candy to celebrate Lunar New Year. It was so fun talking to other members of Division 11, and it made getting home at 9PM worth it!
Angelo Lontok Editor
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Better Chinatown Parade
BY SIDDHAARTA VENKATESH MEMBER
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This event was in Chinatown and started at 9am in the morning where we had to unload the trucks. We had to take out tables, chairs, tents, and the dragons. After unloading the truck we all set up the tents for companies and put the dragon together. Right before the parade we put the rods in the dragon and got on the road to practice walking with the dragon. The parade started at 1pm and lasted for 3 hours.
After the parade we took apart the dragons and took down the tent, tables, and chairs. We took the tables, chairs, tents, and dragons and put it back in the truck. After packing everything we went to the warehouse and unloaded everything. I had a lot of fun and I was even able to get my name written in Chinese. Throughout our time volunteering we kept each other happy and joking about each other. It was a long but fun day.
Overall, this experience taught me a lot about Chinese culture and I feel grateful to be helping organizations such as Better Chinatown that preserve their traditional
The Chinatown parade was a very exhilarating event with many things to do. With all the food, costumes, and music, I really found it interesting. PRATIK YALLAPRAGADA MEMBER
culture even after coming to the US.
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fedoimngltshe
By Tahoor Arif Member
Feeding the Homeless event was a very eye opening event for me. While distributing lunch packages that we had packed all morning to distribute to the homeless, my group had some encounters that transformed our perspectives on these matters. Each homeless person had a unique and intriguing story to share.
The way some of these people had managed to stay positive in even the worst of times surprised me. It made me rethink the way I used to judge people when I saw them on the streets.
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It also made me thankful for the things all of us take for granted but these people don't even have a little bit of. Out of all the events I have gone to during my small period of time in Key Club, this one was definitely my favorite.
Photographer: Alexander Cabrera
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new york chinese school teaching assistants 20
When I first walked in, I was introduced to a classroom filled with many kids who I later found out to be the children of first or second generation immigrants. But, for at least the first few minutes, they were just toddlers who knew a language I had known nothing about. Later, however, I came to find that the group of students had their own unique stories that expressed themselves as people. As the actual lesson began, it was hard; I don't speak Chinese, but I was still able to assist students in a more appropriate manner.
Interaction between two different age groups is usually a challenging task. Through this event, volunteers enhanced their communication skills while engaging in tasks with students from 6 years old to teenagers. Although the main task of volunteers was to help the teachers, they were still able to learn too, from leadership and public speaking, to knowledge about Chinese culture.
Tahoor arif Member
These activities seemed to fly by until was assigned to supervise the children playing with some of the equipment outside of the classroom. Both the class and the playing activity reminded me of when I was younger and just as eager as the kids. After I brought the kids down to dismiss them, I returned to the room I was in and helped sweep and clean up. The next three hours was a repeat of what happened before, the same classes and everything, except with different kids. At the end of the day, I learned a lot about what it takes to communicate with young children, and how my past experience can help me with dealing with people from all age groups and nationalities.
Jack Lehman Member
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FUTURE EVENTS 3/17
7 AM - 12:30 PM
3/23 7 AM - 11 AM
3/29 -3/31
SATURDAYS
9 AM - 12 PM
WEEKENDS
9 AM - 12 PM
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United Airlines NYC Half Marathon Central Park 69th Street and West Drive New York, NY 10023 Ladies First Run Shore Road Park Shore Road and 69th Street Brooklyn, NY 11209 Leadership Training Conference The Desmond Hotel, Albany 660 Albany Shaker Road Albany, NY 12211 Meals on Heels Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church 7 West 55th Street New York, NY 10019 New York Chinese School Teaching Assistant New York Chinese School 62 Mott Street #3FL New York, NY 10013
Sign up for these events and many more on the forms posted on either the website or our Facebook group! Please note that Leadership Training Conference (LTC) and Meals on Heels has no form; the deadline for the LTC deposit has already passed and volunteers can show up to Meals on Heels without signing up beforehand.
announcements were held on February 26. Thank CLUB Elections you to all those that ran, and congratulations to Jack Lehman (President), Karen Wu (Vice President), Pratik Yallapragada (Treasurer), Aiko Gerra (Secretary), Laura Song (Editor), and Luis Pagan (Webmaster) for the next service year! The deadline for the Divisional Board DIVISION application for the 2019-2020 service year has passed. Best wishes to the future Internal and External Executive Assistants and the future Social Media Head! Leadership Training Conference (LTC) will DISTRICT be held from March 29-31 at the Desmond Hotel in Albany. The cost to attend will be about $200. Here's to an awesome weekend!
STAY UPDATED!
WEBSITE FACEBOOK GROUP
hsmsekeyclub.weebly.com HSMSE Key Club
EMAIL REMIND
hsmsekc@gmail.com @msekc
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Ca rin g OUR WAY OF LIFE