Martin Kiwanis Club Activities

 

1. Our club sponsors the K family of clubs in the local schools. These are K Kids at Martin Elementary, Builder’s Club at Martin Middle School, Key Club at Westview High School, and Circle K at UTM. The members learn teamwork, leadership, and organizational skills.

2. Our club sponsors the Ernie Blythe Aktion Club which is a community service group composed of adult citizens with developmental disabilities. Members of the club strive to help their communities while developing initiative and leadership skills. A (now deceased) member of our club and Past Governor of the District, Dr. Ernie Blythe, founded the Aktion Club, which for years was the only one in Tennessee. Now there is another in Memphis.

3. Our club awards a scholarship to a Westview High School senior to attend UTM.

4. Our club is an active sponsor of various youth league sports in cooperation with the Martin Parks and Recreation Dept. These include baseball, softball, football, and soccer.

5. Our club makes monetary contributions to  4-H and  Girl Scouts.

6. Our club sponsors the local Cub Scout Pack 37 and assists in providing leadership for the local Cub Scout dens.

7. Our club is co-sponsor with the Martin Parks and Recreation Dept. for the annual fishing derby held in early June at the Recreation Complex pond. The members, along with staff from Parks and Rec, run the registration table, award prizes through drawings, assist kids with bait and removing hooks from fish, the all-important fish count and weigh-in, and award the trophies.

8. Our club organizes the annual Christmas parade for Martin and the surrounding area. This event ushers in the holiday season. The President-Elect is the committee chair, and volunteers run the parking lot line-ups, handle registration, perform traffic control on the parking lot grounds, make arrangements for concessions along the parade route, judge the floats, and get the parade onto the street.

9. Our club provides volunteers to help during the operating hours of Santa’s Village. In addition our club supervises and helps with the counting and sorting of all the food donations during and after the Village.

10. Our club has an annual smoke detector awareness campaign that corresponds with the change from daylight savings time. Changing the batteries in existing smoke detectors is emphasized.

11. Our club members have been very active in the Louisiana-Mississippi-West Tennessee Kiwanis District. In addition to several members having served as the Division 1A Lieutenant Governors, two have served as the District Governor (Ernie Blythe and Linda Ramsey), with one of those being the first-ever female governor of the district. Two (Linda Ramsey and Otha Britton) have served as District Trustees, representing all of West Tennessee, and these same two have served on the District Foundation Board of Directors. One (Otha) served as President of the Foundation.

12. Our club sponsors the annual 5K race held during the Soybean Festival. Area runners enjoy the September event held at the Martin Recreation Complex.
13. Our club hosts an annual Pancake Day Breakfast in late February / early March. Over 700 community residents attend and enjoy not only a complete meal with pancakes, sausage and eggs, but also the great opportunity to visit with others in the community. 14. Our club provides an annual "We Deliver BBQ" meal. Orders are taken in advance and then the BBQ meals are delivered for the noon meal on a Friday. This event offers a meal with a delicious pork BBQ sandwich, cole slaw, chips and a large cookie. Between 600 and 800 meals are usually delivered at this time in late September or early October. Club members assemble the slaw cups on Thursday and then put the meals together on Friday morning just prior to delivering them to area businesses.
15. Our club assists with reading programs at the Martin Public Library. 16. Our club provides one-time contributions to a variety of programs, such as sponsoring a student to go with other Martin youths to visit Japan.
17. Our club has weekly luncheons with speakers from numerous areas of interest, including sports team coaches, DARE programs, police and fire departments, unique hobbies of local residents, health programs, etc. 18. Our club donated around $20,000 of in-kind labor to build the playground that is located at the Martin Recreation Complex on Highway 45E on the south side of Martin. As a result, the playground is marked as the "Martin Kiwanis Playground." Our club continues to supply labor and funding on an as-requested basis from Parks and Rec.
19. Our club assists with the annual Martin Parks and Recreation Easter Egg Hunt and runs the Easter Egg Decorating Contest held in conjunction with the hunt. 20. Our club provides financial support for the Weakley County Reading Railroad program. Kiwanis is sponsoring one child for all five years for a one-time cost of $150. 
  Kiwanis is a global organization of volunteers dedicated to improving the world one child and one community at a time!