THE KIWI BRONX SCIENCE KEY CLUB
VOLUME 8.5 AUGUST EDITION, 2019
ONLY A LIFE LIVED FOR OTHERS IS WORTH LIVING - Albert Einstein
EDITOR'S NOTE
Summer is over and I hope everyone is adjusting properly into the school work! With the start of the new school year comes with many new events and fundraisers to make your school year a little more fun. We've had our Summer meeting and we have our Blaze Pizza fundraiser in the near future. In this issue, we will focus on how our club spends the last days of their Summer to give back to the community. With the start of a new school year, it is stressful but our members always strive through the difficulties and still find the time to help out their community. August may just be the month where everyone hurries to check off as many boxes off their Summer checklist as they can but to a key clubber, it is so much more than just the Summer before school. It is another precious month we can spend serving our community. We will continue to work towards our goal of 14,000 hours as all of you continue to volunteer. This issue showcases all the time and effort every single one of you put into attending an event. This newsletter would not be here without the constant dedication of all of you so give yourself a pat on the back and welcome back the start of school.
Yours in service,
Rachel Lin
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHECK OUT OUR August RECAP VIDEO and OUR August update video! MADE BY OUR SOCIAL MEDIA COHEADS: ALIVIA CHEN AND LORETTA ENG as well as our pres: Pinkey Lam
August Recap August Updates
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CLUB BOARD - PAGE 6 COHEADS - 7 UPCOMING EVENTS - PAGE 10 PAST EVENTS - PAGE 11 SUMMER MEETING - PAGE 28 FUNDRAISER - PAGE 30 REMINDERS AND UPDATES - PAGE 32
2019-2020 CLUB BOARD PRESIDENT PINKEY LAM
LAMP@BXSCIENCE.EDU
VICEPRESIDENT
WANGA@BXSCIENCE.EDU
SECRETARY
FANGV2@BXSCIENCE.EDU
TREASURER CARA LEUNG
LEUNGC@BXSCIENCE.EDU
WEBMASTER & EDITOR RACHEL LIN
LINR5@BXSCIENCE.EDU
AKANEH WANG VANESSA FANG
PROJECT CO-HEADS
WILLIAM WU & FARABI AZAD
FUNDRAISING CO-HEADS
ANNA YE & HALLEN JI
SOCIAL MEDIA CO-HEADS
ALIVIA CHEN & LORETTA ENG
PUBLIC RELATIONS CO-HEADS
BHASKAR CHAKRABARTI & HRIDIA TANHA
SCRAPBOOK CO-HEADS
TIFFANY TSAI & JESSICA ALONSO
AWARDS CO-HEADS
SHAON BARUA & CALEB OH
UPCOMING EVENTS: 9/7/19 NYSOM Wonderful Land of Oz 9/14/19 Flushing BID 9/22/19 Morningside Alliance Festival 9/28/19 Queen’s Walk to End Alzheimer’s 10/12/19 NYC Lupus Walk
PAST EVENTS:
08/03 & 08/10 & 08/11 Summer Streets 08/03 & 08/04 Dragon Boat Festival 08/07 & 08/10 CBWCHC Good Health Day 08/10 & 08/24 Astoria Park Alliance Cleanup 08/13 Raising Our Voices for Yemen 08/25 CBWCHC Back to School Summer Meeting
08/03 & 08/10 & 08/11
SUMMER STREETS
WRITTEN BY SHAON BARUA The purpose of Summerstreets was to promote physical activity in the city by closing down miles worth of city streets from traffic and reserving them for recreational activities for the public. As volunteers, we helped facilitate the different activities at one of the rest stops along the Summer Streets route, such as from basketball to rollerskating to football. I was stationed at this zip line that stretched above the road for about a block for anyone who registered. I had to help register people for the zipline as well as help control the immense crowd at that station. It was an enjoyable job, especially after being allowed a go on the zipline at the end of the event. It was also a nice sight seeing the great number of people out on a nice day taking part in these physical activities and enjoying themselves. So, in the end, having to wake up at three in the morning for the event and arriving in the city while there was still darkness out turned out to be very much worth it.
08/03 AND 08/04
Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival!
WRITTEN BY TIFFANY TSAI The past weekend, August 3rd and 4th, was the annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival. I volunteered at the waterside of the event on Sunday. Volunteers help tie the boats securely to the docks, help the rowing competitors on and off the boats, and push the boat into the lake while cheering them on. It was a very rewarding job, as the rowers express their gratitude toward the works of the volunteers, it motivated us to work harder. Lunch of Cheese, Veggie, and Sausage pizzas were provided for the volunteers. On the land side of the event, there are a lot of different asian foods sold and many different arts and craft booths. Despite the heat and being under the sun the whole day, I had a lot of fun, and I will definitely go again next year!
WRITTEN BY ANNA YE I’d heard about the Hong Kong Boat Festival from most of my friends, so I was anticipating this event quite a lot. When I first arrived, seeing all the tens and people made me feel super invigorated and ready to volunteer, and that feeling lasted the whole day despite the hot summer sun and mosquitos. I mainly helped out at the docks with tying down the boats when the contestants of the race were getting on and off. I got to meet a lot of cool people, eat some delicious lunch, and even get an arm workout. This became one of my favorite events and I definitely recommend everyone to attend next year, but bring some sunscreen!!
WRITTEN BY PINKEY LAM The 29th Annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival was held on August 3rd and 4th in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. This was a Chinese tradition started back in 1990, With over 200 teams competing this year, the importance of volunteers was crucial to running the festival. Volunteer jobs ranged from working on the docks, out in the water, with the registration tent, and so much more. As the teams compete in the ocean paddling to the finish line, on land there are a number of different traditional foods to choose from. The Dragon Boat Festival is not only a bonding experience for families and teams competing, but also the volunteers and workers of the festival. I worked by the docks with a lot of other Key Club members from Francis Lewis and Division 8, as well as members from my own club. Although it was scorching hot and most of us were sunburnt by the end of it, it was nice to help competitors get on and off the boats safely. Every job at the festival was crucial to its success.
WRITTEN BY JOLIN ZHOU This was my first time going to the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Event. I signed up for a full day shift, so I came at 7 AM and was immediately sent to the VIP tent to carry tables and chairs to the other tents since I was on the land side of the event. It was some hard work that we had to do because the first tents that we bought the tables to was the Arts & Craft and NonProfit tents. It was quite a distance from the VIP tent so walking back and forth while carrying such heavy tables under the sun were pretty exhausting. I went with a friend and together we met a sophomore who happens to be a fellow Bronx Science Key Club member. As a result, the three of us worked alongside volunteers from other schools to help set up the tables, chairs, and stanchions for tents. By the time that shift 2 comes, people who only signed up for shift 1 starts to leave and people with shift 2 starts to arrive. The sophomore girl that my friend and I worked with in the morning had also left around this time. As shift 2 starts, my other friend who signed up for shift 2 also arrived. During the afternoon, the three of us guarded the VIP tent entrance to ensure only VIP members can enter, lead them to find their VIP tags, and provide them with cold drinks. It was around this time that I got to know this girl who I later found out was a sophomore from the Bayside High School Key Club. The four of us was at the VIP tent together at the entrance until after the event ended and everyone started cleaning up the tables and chairs again. The four of us went around different tents to close up the tables and chairs and bring them back to the VIP tent. Gratefully, we didn’t have to bring the tables and chairs from the Arts & Craft and NonProfit tents back to the VIP tent. The four of us continued to close the tables and chairs for those tents and stack them up until other volunteers came to help. At the end of the day I realized I was working mostly along the Stuy Key Club members with a few (like one or two) from other Key Clubs (not including Bronx Science). Although the whole day was pretty tiring, I still wanted to go for day 2 as well, but unfortunately I couldn’t make it due to other schedules.
CBWCHC Good Health Day
08/07 & 08/10
Written by Anthony Lim Good Health Day was a really exciting event, with many people that lived in the Flushing Area coming by to participate. During the event, Key Club volunteers helped tattoo young children with fun and playful cartoon characters. Although I completely failed on my first attempt at giving a child a tattoo, by not peeling the plastic off before applying the tattoo, I eventually got the hang of it. We surprisingly bumped into Bayside High School Key Club treasurer, Hana Ho, who was helping us manage the station. At the end of the event, we tattooed ourselves, with different parts of various tattoos. Afterwards, we helped deconstruct the event, taking away the tables and making sure materials were in place. It was so nice being able to see friends that I haven’t seen all summer.
ASTORIA PARK ALLIANCE CLEANUP Written by Rachel Lu
08/10 & 08/24
On August 10th, around 10 am, I arrived at Astoria Park with the rest of the group to participate in the Astoria Park Alliance Cleanup event. We were joined with various other volunteers from official groups to small families and shared the common goal of making sure the park remains clean. The group was split in two, one was tasked with weeding along the paths while another was tasked with picking up trash. My friends and I grabbed gloves and a trash picker to join the group headed along the sidewalk to the river shore. We started filling up the trash bags we were given. Before long, it became a competition of who can find the most trash and pick them up the quickest. The park was surprisingly clean compared to other park cleanups I volunteered at. The only issue was the abundance of cigarettes, dubbed “ciggies� by some of the younger volunteers, found underneath park benches. Once the event ended, we were awarded protein bars for our hard work.
Written by Nathan Li My experience volunteering for the recent Astoria Park Alliance CleanUp was very unique to me. My designated job was much like everyone else's. We were assigned Grip’n Grabs and large trash bags. Our job was to scour the Astoria Park shore in search of garbage and foreign objects that really shouldn’t be there. I also helped bring a couple beams of wood out of the shore. What really struck me was the amount of garbage that was on the shore. There was so much broken glass shards from beer bottles littering the entire “beach”. It was sunny that day and from the ground, I could see the shine of so many different shades of green and brown. Have you ever heard of crinkling waves? Every time the waves crashed upon the wet rocks, there would be a crinkling sound of glass on glass. This event really moved me because it gave me first-hand experience of the amount of garbage that is really in our city. We found many bags, random lumber pieces, and various objects such as glow sticks and even crutches. The experience was even more moving when I saw the number of people participating. There were people from as far as a Taiwan group coming to NYC to help with the cleanup. There were also several universities there too. I have been to Astoria Park before for another Key Club event called Light the Night, but this was the first time I’ve seen the extent of the pollution there and it really made me reflect the human footprint on our planet.
R S G O V C F Y E 08/13
WRITTEN BY AARON PETERS Raising Our Voices For Yemen was an event and fundraiser held at The People’s Forum in Manhattan. I was there volunteering and representing the club in addition to other individual volunteers who had come to help out. We assisted the managers of the event with setup, getting food and drinks provided and organized for all the people attending the event (of which there were nearly 100). We helped to check in the various attendees and after initial proceedings were finished, we watched the presentation for the event. It began by describing the school situation in Yemen and the struggle for funds and teachers. Afterwards, there were many music and art presentations. When the event was finished, we helped to clean up with the event staff.
CBWCHC BACK TO SCHOOL 08/25
Written by jessica Alonso On August 25th, I attended the Back to School event held at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center. The purpose of the event was to provide parents with information about free medical care, health insurance, and vaccines for their children. As children and parents arrived to the event, a few volunteers were in charge of controlling the flow of the event. While parents discussed with the coordinators, an educational game was set up for the children to play with. I along with other key club members were in charge of making sure the kids knew how to play the game. This was one of my favorite parts of the event because many of the kids were really small and funny. Some volunteers were also responsible for handing out bookbags filled with school supplies that the kids could use for school. Once the all the bags were handed out, one of the coordinators showed us how to make balloon animals for those who didn’t receive supplies. We ended up making so many different kinds of figures that we didn’t know what to do with them. Overall, I was really happy I attended the event because I had a lot of fun spending time with the little kids.
SUMMER MEETING! August 11th
WRITTEN BY MATTHEW HE On 8/11, we had our summer meeting. This year, it was at Corona Park. We played cards, listened to music, ate food, talked, and ran in the sun. The board gave some updates regarding the service year goals and afterwards, we had a service project. We laid out all the notebooks, folders, and pencils, then divided everything up and put them into bags. Together, we raised a total of $108 and provided children with school supplies!
PIZZA FUNDRAISER!
REMINDERS & UPDATES
Submit photos and articles: LINK HERE Points Corrections: LINK HERE Board Suggestions: LINK HERE First meeting in October
Sincerely, BxScikeyClub
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Sincerely, BxScikeyClub
BRONX SCIENCE LOGGING OUT