Category Archives: Service Activities

Have You Volunteered Lately?

Monday Morning

We had a nice turnout of 20 members at our Monday meeting along with our speaker, Nancy Zompolas from the Volunteer Center of Fond du Lac County and Craig Larson, guest of Gary Ring. Gary Ring made a donation presentation from the Spiritual Aims Committee to a needy family to help with the purchase of a used minivan. The presentation was made to Craig Larson who spearheaded the fund raising efforts through social media to help this needy family. Gary Ring also reminded Club members that Spiritual Aims is also collecting books for “Raffle Basket” for an upcoming Grief Relief fund raiser. “Happy Bucks” were offered by Gary Ring in celebration of his and Lois’ 40th wedding anniversary over the weekend, Del Waldschmidt to promote our upcoming NFDL PDQ Brat Fry on April 11th, Harry Schneider for a lucky weekend at the Knights of Columbus Bowling Tournament, Jan Krug for being back from a wonderful vacation in Mexico and Glen Treml for a new grandbaby on the way. Jackie King was the 50/50 Raffle winner on Monday and she drew the King of Spades, a non-winner. Next week’s drawing will have 46 cards, including eight pay cards, and a pot of at least $74.

Nancy Zompolas, Volunteer Center
Nancy Zompolas joined us on Monday morning to update us on what’s happening at the Volunteer Center. Nancy has been the Executive Director at the Volunteer Center for the past three years and has facilitated a number of growth areas at the Center. They currently have a branch office in donated space at the Ripon School District to help extend this valuable resource into western Fond du Lac County. Nancy talked about two programs that have really taken off over the past couple of years. First of these is the Higher Education cService-Learning Program.

The Volunteer Center works closely with faculty and staff from local higher education institutions to help them develop service-learning experiences for their students. Whenever possible, project ideas are submitted directly by the agencies they serve. Participation in these programs has been growing nicely since they started several years ago.

The second program that Nancy talked about was Youth Civic Engagement & Service-Learning. This program connects youth to service opportunities that will promote civic responsibility, understanding of diversity, skill development, and practical application of curriculum objectives. This is accomplished through the Youth & Family Volunteer Guide, the annual Youth Leadership Camp, summer school programs in Ripon and Rosendale/Brandon school districts, and partnerships with local educators. According to Nancy, this program has exploded, especially as more students are looking for service opportunities for various reasons. The Volunteer Center is currently working with 52 different youth groups to match them up with various service projects that will fulfill the mission of the various groups. While Nancy didn’t give us a number of how many youth are involved it sounds like there are a lot of youth involved in these programs.

Nancy closed with a brief description of “Kitchen Table Kits” that allow just about anyone to do some volunteer activity.

Upcoming Kiwanis Events

We have several events coming up over the next several months as you look at your upcoming calendars.

Fond du Fest – Today in Downtown Fond du Lac. We take a scaled down version of our cheese curd operation to the street in front of National Exchange Bank with the hopes of selling anywhere from 250 – 500 pounds of cheese curds. The weather is forecast to be beautiful, so come out and support the Kiwanis.
38th Annual Pork Fest – Thursday, September 25th at the KC Hall. Tickets available online
A confirmed date of October 8th has been set for our Annual Installation Banquet. Get the date on your calendar. Cocktails will be at 5:30PM with dinner at 6:30PM and the installation program to follow. The cost per person will be $20. The menu selections should be out next week.
The Club Satellite’s first annual Pink Pumpkin Run/Walk is set for October 18th at 10:00AM. This is a collaborative project between students at MPTC and our Club Satellite and Host Club Members. Proceeds from this event will be going to women battling with breast cancer by sponsoring them to attend a four day retreat through Bcrecovery.org.

You Can Probably Guess What the Kiwanians Are Up To

If you are looking for an update and are looking for the Kiwanians, you probably know that there is only one place to find us. We are out making our community better of course. With the Memorial Day holiday and the Walleye Weekend fundraiser the Kiwanis of Fabulous Fond du Lac are staying very busy during the end of May and beginning of June. We are thankful for all the support we get on a regular basis from the community, and we hope that you are pleased with the ways the Kiwanis of Fabulous Fond du Lac are serving the community to make it a better place to live. Come out to Walleye Weekend to support us and check back in a few weeks when the schedule gets back to normal.