Volume 2, Issue 6 November 5, 2013
The official newsletter of the Cypress Woods High School Key Club
KEY FACTS
Full Speed
Ahead
The school year is back in full-swing, and Key Club is getting more and more active.
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State of the Club Address See what Bryan Veit has to say about the club this year.
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Holiday Helpers Read of how Key Clubbers are volunteering this holiday season.
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Stay Connected The ins and outs of planning a Key Club social
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CON RIBUTI NS ARTICLES Aranka Barbe Priscilla Lam Natasha Solanki Dang Dinh Matthew Faga Raj Asarpota
PRESIDENT’S LETTER Bryan Veit
COVER PHOTO Julia Held BACK COVER PHOTOS Julia Held Bryan Veit
IN THIS ISSUE... A word from club president Bryan Veit 03 See the theme for DCON 2014! 04 Find out how to get involved during the holidays 06 Help others instead of yourself this Halloween 10 Contact your club, division, and district officers 11
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A letter from your
Club President Dear fellow Key Clubbers, As we enter the month of November, we can celebrate surpassing the halfway point in the fall semester. The past weeks and months have been hectic for Key Club, but they also have been quite productive. And now that the club has settled– membership forms are in, dues are paid, and databases are updated – we can tighten our focus on serving the community and participating in the projects that define us as a club. The past weeks shine with success, but they seem dim compared to the brightness of the future. Though things have only recently settled for the club, we have already accomplished some amazing and honorable feats. In early October we allocated UNICEF boxes to members who wanted to aid in raising funds for UNICEF and Kiwanis. Just recently, we started collecting and counting these boxes of hope. As of now, we have raised well over $500 dollars, and additional boxes have yet to be counted! This money will, obviously, go towards a noble cause, but the final destination of these funds was not stressed at the past meetings. The fortune from the boxes will go towards the ELIMINATE Project. With the ELIMINATE Project, Kiwanis International and UNICEF have joined forces to eliminate maternal and neonatal tetanus (MNT). This deadly disease steals the lives of nearly 60,000 innocent babies and a significant number of mothers each year. To eradicate MNT from the Earth, more than 100 million mothers and their future babies must be immunized. Cy Woods Key Club’s recent contribution will go towards saving the lives of hundreds of babies. Though this impact may seem small numerically, we must realize that even our modest support saves and gives human life… it ensures the joy of a mother’s first touch. We can use this profound accomplishment as motivation to ensure a strong finish to the semester. The passing of the halfway point in the semester, however, has also caused some minor angst amongst members. Many fear that they will not be able to fulfill the hours requirements at the current rate of events, and many have noticed how quickly the events we do have fill up. But do not fret! If you are dedicated to fulfilling the requirement and serving the community, you will meet your goals with ease. The amount of events we have increases each year as we approach the holidays, and you always can work towards finding up to ten outside hours from independently found events. With upwards of three hundred members, the officers of the club are constantly trying to seek out new events. Trust in our abilities, and aid us by sharing any community needs you may know of. The success of the club is dependent on a collaborative effort; an organization that serves the community must be a community itself. Together we can achieve great things, from facilitating the success of a small festival to preserving the life and love of a human being. The world will always have a need for doers of greatness, so we have our futures set out for us. Go do.
In service,
Bryan J. Veit President of Cy Woods Key Club
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Carols, Cookies and Cards Creative ideas for winter volunteer opportunities We ’ r e all familiar w i t h Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a story of sharing the joys of the holidays. As Key Club members, we can actively bring this spirit of giving back as the holiday season progresses through fun activities in which everyone can get involved. While the majority of area neighborhoods disallow soliciting, there is another way to raise money or donations than going caroling from door to door. Hosting a carol concert in a nearby park is a familyfriendly way to get both young and old involved in giving. Gather some friends and learn some tunes (ask your choir, orchestra and band buds to participate) and spread the word a week or two in advance by distributing flyers. Ask attendees to bring imperishable food items they did not use during hurricane season for donation to the Cypress Assistant Ministries (as well as some blankets; even in Houston winters can get chilly). You can also offer free apple cider and hot cocoa as a bonus to enjoying great music and the gift of giving.
The results of a food drive, one example of a beneficial wintertime service project
Everyone loves sweets during the winter. You can use this built-in sweet tooth to raise funds for charities by hosting neighborhood bake sales. If you don’t know what to bake, try asking around first to get an idea of what people are in the mood for this season. If you shop for the ingredients wisely, you can turn a great profit to donate. Charities get donations, and families get cookies to lay out for a certain jolly bearded man on Christmas Eve. In this season of celebrating friends and family, it is important to remember that not everyone
is blessed with these wonderful people; there are kids in our community who do not have the gift of receiving Christmas cards from relatives. Though the cards may not come from family, this situation can easily be remedied. Key Club members can organize groups to create kid-friendly holiday greeting cards to donate to organizations like Boys and Girls Country. Use fun materials like interesting paper and glitter to decorate the messages and spread some festive holiday spirit. If you want to get super creative, design pop-ups to
amuse younger children. Everybody deserves a card during the holidays, and making and distributing them is a wonderful way to spread cheer this winter. Most Key Club members have wonderful holidays, filled with family and joy. Yet, as fortunate as we are, there are some who are not as fortunate but deserve a holiday season filled with just as much happiness. By hosting fun activities your whole community can get involved in to raise donations, you will not only spread holiday cheer to your neighbors but to the whole community.
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Fall Festival Fun Volunteering is what makes a community because it brings people together to work towards a common goal, and this unity is especially seen during the holiday season when almost everyone is looking for a helping hand. When a person donates a handful of their time, the difference made is tremendous, and it shapes a community for the better. During this year’s festive time, I was fortunate enough to donate my time in helping out at the Christ United Church. As many people know, the months of October through December can be quite hectic with all of the festivities, which bring food, church events and, of course, volunteers. This October, Christ United needed volunteers to help set up and
A Key Clubber shares her experiences volunteering at a fall festival
organize their fall festival. With high spirits, I, along with many other Key Clubbers, began our mission to help set up the festival by constructing canopies outside. Despite the heat beating down on us, the motivation to help the church out made the task rewarding. Through teamwork, we worked through the challenge of constructing six canopies. Although the process was long and tiring, each volunteer stepped up to the plate and worked hard to get the job done. After each tent was set up, we continued to showcase our diligence by carrying wooden tables to their designated spots. With the help of adults, we quickly finished our task. By the end of it, the parking lot was transformed into a shaded area where people could sit down and enjoy their food and the festival activities. The entire experience was very rewarding, and the person in charge was very thankful for our services. The smiles
and thankful faces that surrounded us made everything worth it. It made me feel like I was a part of something bigger. I wasn’t just part of a club at school. No; I was a part of the community, and I’m glad Key Club was the foundation for my participation in the community that surrounds us. All in all, high schoolers should realize that volunteering is more than just an activity that can help you get your hours done. It is something that brings hope and happiness to people, and it also leads to spiritual and personal growth. It gives you the satisfaction of playing a role in someone else’s life, and it is a way of giving back to your community. Volunteering is a chain reaction in which everyone gets to share the happiness. It is a step closer to a better community, one unselfish act at a time. It is simply an experience that cannot be bought with any amount of money.
A Season of Service
A Key Clubber shares her experiences volunteering at a fall festival As we all know, Ha l l o w e e n , Thanksgiving, and Christmas are coming up. Many great volunteering opportunities will be flying towards you, such as the Christ United Fall Festival that occurred on October 27. The day before the festival, Key Clubbers assisted the Church with setting up tables, tents and activities, and helping with food. We all worked together in assembling the tents for a couple of hours, and then we helped set up activities, which included creating giant dice and setting up a lollipop
tree. Some helped count tickets while others helped create a jar filled with candy corn by counting how many there were, so that people, the next day, could guess how many there are in the jar to try to win a prize. Others helped in the kitchen with washing and drying dishes and squeezing lemons, and at the end we all tidied up the place by vacuuming the area and picking up trash. This tied in to the next day. During the festival, the Key Clubbers helped with the live auction, cutting cake, and setting up tables and chairs. They presented the items being auctioned while walking around. As the event came to an end, they took down the tents and helped
clean up. Events like this are exciting during the time that the holidays are approaching. It really warms people’s hearts that we are there to volunteer and assist them. They wouldn’t be able to do it without us. Another event similar to this would be the Cypress Point Halloween Event. This event occurred the same weekend as the Christ United Fall Festival. Volunteers helped set up and as the event started, they worked with the snow cone, cotton candy and popcorn machines. They also helped with the train, making sure that the children were buckled up. Finally, as it ended, they helped clean up. Other great holidaythemed service events could
be ones relating to Christmas or the winter season. This time is great for helping out others. For example, events such as volunteering at Christmas parties, creating stockings, donating toys and items, and making Christmas cards for the poor and soldiers. Toys should be donated to the kids that don’t have any or for the kids who can’t afford to buy toys. Scarves, coats, blankets, hats, and gloves could be donated to the needy children, and baking cookies or cooking a meal would be appreciated as well. There are many great ways to help out the community in the upcoming months.
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Having Fun in Key Club Simple steps to a spectacular interclub social An interclub social is a wonderful way to get to know your fellow Key Clubbers in your own home club as well as those in other clubs around the District. Yet the hassle it produces can become a doubleedged sword to its benefits. So, what can you do to prevent this? First and foremost, get together the officer teams of both clubs or, if the entire officer team can’t make it, have the presidents contact one another to get a plan started. Go over ideas where a social can be held, what day it will be, and how long it will be. Discuss these aspects in great detail since you don’t want to have a social on a day where most people can’t or won’t attend, like the same day as a football game. Also, you don’t want to have a social at a location that is too far away from everyone that will attend. Gas is getting more and more expensive, and for those like me who don’t have a driver’s license, parents won’t be willing to drive all the way down to the location. Finally, setting a time frame for the event gives you an idea of what events you can plan. Without the time frame, you might plan so many events that the social becomes boring and a waste of time. Now that you have all these foundational aspects planned, time to move on to the next step: advertising. Advertising, especially nowadays, plays a crucial role in making an event fly or flop. The moment a date is set for the social, promote it within the club through posters, flyers and social media. In fact, have poster party. It’s a small social for the club officers, and it helps make tons of posters and for the event. Also, make an event on Facebook, tweet it on Twitter or simply talk about it at your club meetings. Talking about the social at club meetings help provide feedback from the members who are supposed to attend and helps the club decide whether the social has
any preliminary problems. Know that, although there might be some people unhappy with the ideas, you can’t really appease everyone. Take each response into consideration, and judge whether it is a red flag or a false alarm. Finally, go to the event and have fun. You worked so hard to make the event a reality, it is time to relax and get to know other people. Don’t worry about if there are going to be problems; after all, these things happen. You just have to get over it and enjoy the atmosphere, friendship and experience that came from organizing this event. At the end of the social, have a mini-feedback poll. There’s no need to go through the hassle of creating a long questionnaire – trust me, it’s timeconsuming and wastes so much paper – just ask the people you are talking to in a conversation what they liked or didn’t like about the social and tips or ideas to make it better for the next one. After all, you and the rest of the officer team now have the experience from planning one; what’s stopping you from planning another?
Cy Woods Key Clubbers at the annual beginning-of-the-year Ice Cream Social
Cy Ranch and Cy Woods Key Clubbers at an interclub social
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Group Social Check List How to make sure your next Key Club social is successful Group socials are essential to the overall success of a group or organization. They unite the club and increase chemistry among the club’s members making working together Matthew Faga
SophomoreRepresentative
are a smaller club, you have much more freedom to pick any location that you would like. This step is crucial to the overall success you’ll find at your event. In my own opinion, the most important part of
shouldn’t be difficult. Today, we have Facebook, Twitter and Remind 101 to easily spread ideas, such as a group social, to every member with one post. Another option for advertising is to announce it two or three general meetings
this is to make up a very good icebreaker for the entire group to participate in, such as a game. It is then important to come up with an activity for the rest of the time; for example, a simple service project to get people to work together on
Cy Woods Key Clubbers complete service projects and make new friends at the annual Lock-in.
more natural, which makes the club more productive and effective as a whole. The first step to creating a social for a group is finding a location that can support the entire size of your group. It is very important to select a location that brings appeal to the majority of your group. If you are a large club, you must be sure to find a location that is large enough to hold all of your people. However, if you
planning a successful group social is having extraordinary advertising. The more you spread the word of a social to the members of your group, the more people will come to your event and meet fellow members. For effective advertising you must have multiple ways to spread the information to the members, and today, with all of the social media and technological advances, this
in advance and announce it many times to assure that every one has heard it as well as seen it. Lastly, you must create entertainment ideas to get the members to interact with one another. This can be difficult to do sometimes, but getting good ideas can really set a great atmosphere for the event and get the people to open up to each other. The best way to begin an event like
something productive. The last step for entertainment is to have food or drinks, because it is well-known that people love food, and it can usually attract a crowd. It is not a secret that a group social can influence the wellbeing of your club, so why not have a few a year and get different members to interact and get to know each other to make your club feel like a large family.
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No Tricks Here
Trick-or-Treating was a little more meaningful this Halloween. W h a t are tips to collect the maximal amount of funds through Tr i c k - o r Treat for UNICEF? In other words, how can one use Halloween to gather spare change for UNICEF? There are four methods one can use. They could actually go Trick-or-Treating with the UNICEF box. The second method includes a service project in which members could participate and charge customers a small fee. The third method could be used at a Halloween party, and the fourth method is the Best Costume Contest method. The Trick-or-Treating example is a great technique to use on Halloween to collect funds for UNICEF. Instead of taking a bucket or a pillow cover, someone could take their UNICEF box and ask for spare change rather than candy, resulting in a full box of change in no time. The second method someone can use is the Haunted House method. The Haunted House method is a volunteer service idea where members can make a makeshift haunted house from either cheap supplies the can buy at the store or supplies they can find in their house. The volunteers then set the haunted house up in their neighborhood during Halloween night and charge a very small fee to potential Trick-or-Treaters, which all goes to UNICEF funds.
The Halloween Party is another excellent technique to use. This method is useful because it can branch off into many smaller methods that can each help gather funds for UNICEF. One branchoff method is the “Choose the Torture” method. Have donors pay a dollar a vote to decide which form of “torture” to inflict on the party’s host (ex. dye hair, dress in a silly costume, etc). Another branch-off method is the “Reverse Raffle Method,” during which all potential sponsors at the party to get a raffle ticket and sell it back for a few dollars to avoid getting their name drawn to do something embarrassing. One final method is the Best Costume Contest. This is where people pay a dollar to enter a best costume contest for them to do a small talent, also showing off their costume. The others at the party will vote for the best talent and the best costume. The winners will receive an earlier donated prize.
In conclusion, whether it is the Trick-or-Treating method, the Haunted House method, the Best Costume Contest method or the Halloween Party method, there are many methods someone can use
during Halloween to collect money for their UNICEF box. The main idea is to collect maximal amount of funds for UNICEF, which will ultimately go to the needy children around the world.
Key Club members took a box like this home for a month in which to collect money while trick-or-treating.
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Contact Information
CY WOODS KEY CLUB // OFFICERS
President Vice President Senior Secretary Editor Treasurer Representative Coordinator Webmaster K-Family Board Sponsor
Bryan Veit Natasha Solanki Dang Dinh Nikki Carter Kelli Brusen Gaurav Lalsinghani Nicholas Nguyen Derielle Keiser Drishti Wadhwa Kelsey Foulds Madelin Cowden Ryan Lucker John Kent
bryveit1995@gmail.com natasha.solanki@hotmail.com dang.qdinh@gmail.com ncarter37@sbcglobal.net kcb400@sbcglobal.net gaunir@yahoo.com nick.erik2010@yahoo.com derielle.keiser@yahoo.com drishtiw@yahoo.com kelseyfoulds@entouch.net madelin11@live.com rjlucker@yahoo.com john.kent@cfisd.net
281-757-7061 281-904-7873 281-723-5695 713-855-1645 832-573-0187 281-796-7349 281-849-4885 281-889-0885 713-614-2052 281-253-8280 281-210-6465 832-334-1033
DIVISION 3N // LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
Gabi Bradshaw
Cypress Falls
gabibradshaw3nltg@gmail.com
832-341-6930
TEXAS-OKLAHOMA // DISTRICT STAFF Governor Secretary Treasurer Editor Convention Liason
Luke Broussard Usman Hyder Isaiah Vallequinones Tashrima Hossain Grace Liu
governor@tokeyclub.com secretary@tokeyclub.com treasurer@tokeyclub.com editor@tokeyclub.com conventionliason@tokeyclub.com
325-998-1384 817-715-5111 580-458-1432 713-505-2252 817-962-8945
KEY FACTS
CY WOODS KEY CLUB // NOVEMBER 2013