Paschal Key Club Volume 4 | Issue 1
April Fun Facts: Earth Day (Apr 22) was originally intended to be March 21. In Old English the month of April was called Eastermonad. In Belgium, France, and Italy, there is an April Fool tradition of tacking paper fish to people's backs!
April is... DCON MONTH!!!!!
April 2015 Newsletter Division 1S | Texas-Oklahoma District
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What's Inside: Events this Month
Page 2
Page 3
A Note from Your President and Editor
Sight to the Blind
Page 4
Pages 5 -8
The DCON Experience Page 6
DCON Debutante
Pages 7-8
Trinity Trash Bash
DCON Finale
Page 9
Page 10
Meet the Board!
Dirty Scurry
Page 11
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Events this Month April 2015 Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
1 2 BB (4-5pm) Agape (5:30pm)
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6
12 DCON!!!!!
13
19
20
26
27
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GCG (45pm)
GCG (45pm)
GCG (45pm)
GCG (45pm)
3
Ronald McDonald House (48pm)
15 16 BB (4-5pm) Agape RC (5:30pm) (3:40pm) RC (3:40pm)
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22 23 BB (4-5pm) Agape RC (5:30pm) (3:40pm) RC (3:40pm)
Trinity River Clean-Up (4-6pm)
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18
24
25 Dirty Scurry Adventure Run (8:30am-12pm) UCC Mobile Food Pantry (8:3011:30am)
29 30 BB (4-5pm) Agape RC (5:30pm) (3:40pm) RC (3:40pm)
BB - Braille Bibles Agape - Agape Feeding the Homeless GCG - George C. Clarke Elementary School Library RC - Recycling Club at Paschal
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8 9 10 11 BB (4-5pm) DCON!!!!! DCON!!!!! DCON!!!!! Agape ACS Relay (5:30pm) For Life (2-10pm)
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28
Saturday
Meetings every Tuesday Morning at 8:00!!!
3 A Note from Your President and Editor Hey Key Clubbers! It has been a great start to the new Key Club year, and I hope you all have taken advantage of the service opportunities we have lined up. The Trash Clean-Up, Dirty Scurry, and Mayfest were all successful, and there are more things on the horizon! Keep up with the items on the agenda and what's posted on the Facebook page for updates. There are so many ways to serve, from our weekday projects to our weekend events, and I encourage all of you to try a new thing before the school year ends. Let's keep up the good work and continue that service mentality! Yours in service, Page Trotter
Hi guys! I am so proud of our Key Club; each of us have put in the effort to proactively change our community, giving up our precious time for others' needs, even while cramming for the AP exams! I hope y'all enjoy our newsletter's new look, and feel free to give me any tips or comments on how to improve this newsletter to best serve you guys. A great, big THANK YOU to all of you who have sent pictures and written me articles; this newsletter would definitely not have been possible without y'all. Thanks, and let's continue to work together to better ourselves and our community! Yours truly, Sue Youn Oh
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Sight to the Blind by Katie Hyry
Making Braille Bibles with my Key club comrades is, without a doubt, my favorite Key Club service project. I adore its whole community aspect, because everyone who participates plays a vital role in the grand scheme of producing a Bible. I love that every single Bible we make has a purpose, that it is sent all over the world to people who desperately desire to learn to read, even in darkness, and obtain truth from the Bible. It truly unites our Key Club members in service, and is an amazingly fun and wholesome way to give back to our community.
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The DCON Experience
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DCON Debutante by Ashlie Devenney
DCON was an absolutely amazing experience and I was so excited that I got the chance to attend this year. It was so nice to get to meet so many other people from Key Clubs around the district who love Key Club just as much as I do, if not more! My favorite part would definitely have to be the awards banquet on Saturday night, when all the awards for contests and efforts throughout the year were announced. I remember being filled with elation upon discovering that we were in the top 25 clubs this year! We worked so hard to achieve that, and all our sweat and tears paid off in the end. The new T-O district officials who were elected are great. I am glad that they represent the T-O district and I know they will help us learn and grow for the future, since their principles are aimed at returning Key Club back to the service we were created for. The Governor's ball was incredibly fun. It was insanely cool to be able to simply relax with so many other Key Club fanatics and just have a blast together. On Sunday, it was sad that we had to leave because I think we all felt really close to one another, and though we may not be at DCON all the time, our bond forged through Key Club will last a lifetime. At DCON, I was really inspired to continue with Key Club and Kiwanis after high school and participate in Circle K in college. Without my experience at DCON, I might not have ever found out that that was even possible. I didn't feel the magnitude of Key Club or really understand how large of an organization we are until I went to DCON, where I realized that there are so many other people involved in Key Club and that made me so happy, that so many others my age love helping others. I really hope I get to attend throughout the rest of my high school career so I can experience that feeling, that bond, again, that comes from seeing so many other people falling in love with the same club I have loved for a long time. I hope that everyone in Key Club gets the experience of DCON at least once before going off to college in order to achieve to the same realizations I did while I was there.
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DCON Finale by Sarika Sabnis
The train for Dallas took off at a routine 5pm on Friday, April 9. It hadn’t quite hit me that it would be my last DCON ever. With my lack of sleep night the before, due to some last minute DCON duties, as well as some revisions on scholarship essays, it was needless to say that I was exhausted beyond belief. I closed my eyes on that train, and thought nostalgically about the person I was just two years ago, when I sat in the same train compartment on my way to my first DCON. I was a little quieter back then, having just been introduced to Key Club a few
months prior. When my senior friends raved to me about how much fun DCON was, and even had the courtesy to invite me to attend, I was stoked. I had no idea how wide the scope of Key Club was until I went to my first DCON. It was there that I first began understanding the power of the largest student-run organization in the world. I was beside myself – all this, all organized, lead, and executed by high school students? It was one of the coolest experiences, seeing the dynamic and leadership all these students possessed. I was almost instantly motivated to become more involved. My last DCON was wonderfully bittersweet. The theme was absolutely fantastic, and the district had clearly spent so much time creating the incredible Jurassic Park backdrop to the stage. I sympathized with all the heads in attendance; the Convention Liaison, the District Board, every LTG, sponsor, and Kiwanis member involved – they must have had to stay up five times as long as I did, for the planning of this whole convention. Highly driven and motivated students like them continually surprise me, and I have the highest respect for their abilities to juggle their schoolwork with their huge responsibilities. The convention was so much fun, from the welcoming session bouncy obstacle course and jail cage, to the keynote speaker, to the fun filled forums – it was all a blast, and a weekend I would never forget.
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One such moment was when I played in the talent show at the awards dinner, and
returned to my table to find that my lovely and gracious Paschal Key Club was voting vivaciously for me in all kinds of ways. I felt the love from everyone in the club. My favorite moment, however, was when we found out that Paschal made the Top 25 Key Clubs list for 2015. Our whole club stood up and yelled out louder than any other club, and Junsung, our president, knocked his chair over and cried tears of joy – the whole thing was just such a gratifying experience. All of the hard work we had put into the club throughout the year, from our whopping service project count, to the membership retention, to the other things like the monthly newsletter and monthly reports, had finally paid off and in such a huge way. Number 19!!! I grew as a person throughout the year, and nothing kept me more grounded (or sane) than Key Club. For anyone looking to become more involved in Key Club next year: just go for it, don’t let anything stop you from reaching out and going for the gold! Find other clubs and collaborate with them, enter crazy contests at DCON like the talent show, make a butt-kicking nontraditional scrapbook! Join the Board so you can contribute your ideas to the fundraisers, service projects, newsletter articles, you name it. Use your leadership skills, and never forget that, “If it is to be, it’s up to me.” And that means YOU.
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Trinity Trash Bash by Cole Harper
A couple weeks ago, a group of Paschal Key Clubbers sacrificed their Friday night for a service project. Cleaning up trash is not a typical activity for high school students on a Friday night, however Key Clubbers are not your typical high school students. Armed with trash grabbers and plastic bags, we ventured into the wilderness of the sidewalk near Trinity River. We didn't even stop for food, and I had skipped lunch. That, is true dedication. Upon arrival, we unloaded and began picking up trash. It was tough work. We constantly scanned the ground and worked until we had picked up enough trash to fill two and a half trash bags. Not bad for a few high school students. We admired our work, seeing a new and cleaner path on our way back. We all gained newfound pride in our community and saw the real harm litter could do. We even suffered a minor causality on the way back. One of our Key Clubbers stepped in dog poop! It reminded us that no matter how much trash and junk we picked up, there would always be more. It also reminded us that we had to get out there again and make a difference in the world, one piece of trash at a time. I cannot wait to do it again.
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Dirty Scurry by Jillian Daugherty
On April 25th, I volunteered with fellow Key Clubbers at an event called the Dirty Scurry. The event was constituted of kids running on a path and going through obstacles such as mud slides, pools of water, and long tunnels. My job in particular was to direct children of various ages along a pathway, and to encourage them to continue and finish the race. It was an uplifting experience to see my encouragement motivate the kids to run on instead of giving up. I saw every child's clothing transform from dry, crisp, and clean, to ones soaked in mud, which was quite amusing to witness. The event was overall a terrifically enjoyable experience, and I am glad I went to the Dirty Scurry.
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Meet the Board! Page Trotter, President Diana Lee, Vice President
trotter.page@gmail.com
817-946-8718
Reid Yanney, Secretary
Reidlyanney@gmail.com Sue Youn Oh, Editor
paschalkeyclubvp@gmail.com
817-694-5124
Sujata Dalal, Treasurer
682-597-9197 sujatadalal12@gmail.com
817-313-0445
Members-at-Large Parliamentarian: Carter Dickson (817-781-5909) Historian: Jillian Daugherty Social Chair: Chloe Underwood Advertising Chair: Moni Gunderson Attendance Manager: Andrea Rios
paschalkeyeditor@gmail.com