MEET KIWANIS
MANY ARE AWARE OF THE 105-YEAR-OLD CIVIC CLUB BUT MAY NOT UNDERSTAND THE GROUP’S MISSION. WE INTERVIEWED THE STARKVILLE CHAPTER PRESIDENT AND A LONG-TERM MEMBER FOR MORE INSIGHT
Name of the organization: Kiwanis International
Founding date: January 21, 1915
President/CEO: Daniel Vigneron
Location: Indianapolis, Indiana
Number of employees & volunteers: 40 locally
Interviewee's: Jim Henson (Starkville chapter President), active since 1974
Richard Switzer (Past President, Future Board Member), active since early 1980s
Favorite program: Henson - helping to put AED’s (Automated external defibrillators) in every school in Oktibbeha County and the city of Starkville
Switzer - United We Read and United We Feed.
How did you first get involved with Kiwanis International’s Starkville branch?
Richard Switzer (past president): Well, actually, it was through playing golf. I was playing golf with one of the members at that time, and he just invited me to one of their meetings. And at that time, there were about 100 members in the club and one of the things that they're fundraising was they ran a concession stand at Humphrey Coliseum at (Mississippi State). At the time I wasn't doing any real volunteer work, so I thought that would be interesting. The one thing I asked him is do I have to sell anything door to door because I didn't want to do that. He told me about the concession stand and invited me to the Coliseum for one of their basketball games. So I went and worked with them and met a lot of people and some of them I knew from work already, so I just decided to become a member.
Jim Henson (chapter president): Oh just a friend from the bank invited me to go to lunch with him one day to his visit to Kiwanis Club and I stayed for 40 years I guess so far.
I know this year has been kind of crazy with everything going on, including the COVID-19 pandemic, but what have you all been up to the past few months?
Jim Henson: Oh my goodness, we've been involved in international projects over the years. And we've done books for grammar schools before and we're doing a book for four year olds, every four year olds in Starkville and Oktibbeha County, right now. They’re purchased and waiting on a delivery and setting them up so we can hand them out.”
Richard Switzer: We have kind of two sides: One is our service projects. About five years ago, when I was president, we started partnering with the United Way of North Central Mississippi here in Starkville and the first thing we did with them was a big food drive. They have a program called United We Feed where they put big cardboard boxes in grocery stores and have volunteers handing out slips of paper and people donate food into those boxes. And they were looking for somebody who could haul all that food to a central storage place and sort it. So the Kiwanis ended up doing that.
So we've been partnering with the United Way for five years now. The big food drive used to be in November, when we would have boxes at Walmart, Vowell’s and Kroger, and we'd collect 20-30 tons of food. But this year then with the COVID, we found out that a lot of the food banks were running out of food because so many people were laid off. So starting in early May, every two weeks we did a food drive and have food giveaways to the food banks. We started out donating to 10 food banks, but the last food giveaway we had we did 15 food banks here in Starkville. The first four of them we did one every two weeks and then the food bank started getting food from other organizations and things. So now we're doing a food drive every month and so that's our big service project.
We also partner with (United Way) in April on a book drive and giveaway. It's called United We Read. And so this past April, we collected maybe 5000 books. There's an event here in Starkville called ‘Touch-a-truck’ and so last year at that, we set up about 10 to 12 tables and laid out books for all groups, all ages, all subjects, and let people come by and pick up as many books as they wanted. But this year, by the time we were ready to do that, COVID shut everything down. So once the community market opened up, we went there every Saturday morning from about 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. and set up half a dozen tables for our kids books, adult books of all subjects.
You mention the United We Read program being affected some by the COVID-19 pandemic, how have you all adjusted within this ‘new normal’?
Richard Switzer: Well normally what we do is we meet every Tuesday at the Hilton Garden Inn, where we have lunch and have a program and we pay $57 a month in dues and $11 of that goes to administration and then $46 pays for our meals. But once COVID hit we stopped meeting and what the members decided to do instead of canceling that $46, they donated that to the United Way Food Drive. So for April, May and June we ended up donating about $4,500 to buy non-perishable food items as part of that food drive I was telling you about. And then we had some individual members who donated just on their own as well. We had one couple who donated — you know, we got those $1200 checks from the government — and they donated both of their checks to that food drive. So, all total the Kiwanis Club has put about $8,000 to 9,000 into that food drive.
Jim Henson: Well, when COVID started out, the meetings were all called off for several months now. A few weeks ago we decided we could meet so the hotel set the dining room up for us so we can have people all spread out and (socially distanced). The distance thing has worked really well for us and the serving of the food is taken care of and nobody gets close to that. It has worked out really well for us the last few weeks. It gets really boring when you just sit at home. I’ve been retired for 20 years now, and when you just sit at home with nothing to do for weeks on end it gets really boring.”
With that, what’s next on the docket for Kiwanis in the coming weeks and heading into the tail end of the year?
Jim Henson: Every year is a separate year. Our year ends starting in October, so we’re coming up on the end of our Kiwanis year. Every president and every board is independent of whatever we’ve done before so it will be up to that president and board of directors as to what we will do in the coming year.
Richard Switzer: We'll do a food drive probably in September, will be our next food drive. And then once the community market starts up again in the fall, we'll do the book giveaways there. We've got our golf tournament, hopefully, if everything works out in October, and then October is when we have the new officers come in and take over in the Kiwanis Club again. So we'll do that and then we'll keep partnering with the United Way on various projects that benefit the community.
This interview has been edited for clarity and flow.
STORY BY BEN PORTNOY
PHOTOS BY LEDRICO ISAAC
If interested in joining Kiwanis International, contact Richard Switzer at 662-312-6025.
