"Children: Their Future, Our Focus" is Key Club International's Major Emphasis Program. It unites Key Clubs under the banner of service that deals with the most important part of our community, our youth. Focusing on the personal development and social interaction of children, Key Club members can help them learn through mentoring, making friends, and working together. As children are taught to work with others, Key Club members open the doors to their future.

Each year Key Club International teams up with other organizations. The Major Emphasis Program focuses on a specific organization during each season of the year. As you plan your club's service programming for the year, keep in mind that with each new season comes a new opportunity to make a difference. Each Key Club is encouraged to participate with the following organizations as they join together to make a difference in the life of children. Click the link for a list of organizations have been approved as official partners.

Service/Major Emphasis Program

Since 1925, Key Club International has provided more than 12 million hours of service to homes, schools, and communities each year. From building bridges, to collecting over six tons of food, thousands of dollars raised for cancer research, helping eliminate iodine deficiency disorder, Key Club International plays a vital role in serving the children of the world.

In 1946, the organization was challenged to build a program to bring together all Key Clubs and members to focus energies on making an international impact. This program is still followed today through the Major Emphasis Program (MEP):“Children: Their Future, Our Focus.”

To fulfill the Major Emphasis Program, Key Club International serves children in many ways. By working with Key Club International’s partner organizations, Key Clubs serve children by aiding other organizations committed to serving children. Key Club International celebrates its four partnerships: UNICEF, fall Season of Service; Children’s Miracle Network, winter Season of Service; March of Dimes, spring Season of Service; and Read and Lead, summer Season of Service.

The Key Club service initiative is another element of the MEP and is created on a two-year basis. All of the hands-on service provided to children by Key Club International members is directed to a single area of need, to make a substantial impact.

MEP: Child Safety Service Initiative

The Service Initiative
Often times when participating in the Key Club International MEP, Children: Their Future Our Focus, fundraising comes to mind. Unfortunately, our partner organizations are not accessible to all Key Clubs who may wish to serve in the MEP. Because of this, whenever a club participates in the MEP, often the club is fundraising to help a partner organization serve children worldwide.

Realizing the need and interest in supporting the MEP through hands on service, a new service initiative will be created on a two-year basis. All of the hands on service provided to children by Key Club International members can be directed to a single area of need to make a substantial impact. This service initiative directs and focuses the attention of Key Club members to serve children in a specific hands-on approach.

Key Club members will be focusing their time and talents for 2004-06 years on Child Safety, specifically educating children ages 4-8 about bike, car, and water safety. This program will not only set forth endless possibilities to strengthen the common goal of service, but also allows each Key Club member to develop into a well-rounded individual, community leader, and lifelong advocate for children.

The Need for Child Safety
Unintentional injury remains the leading cause of death among children ages 14 and under, taking more lives of children than disease, violence, and suicide. Each day one out of four children sustains an injury serious enough to require medical attention. Prevention is the cure. It is estimated that by taking simple precautions, 90 percent of these unintentional injuries can be avoided.

With the realization that unintentional injury is a common problem that can affect any child anywhere across the world, Key Club International is stepping forward to further the efforts to reduce unitentional injury by educating children, families, and the greater community. Key Club International is dedicating its efforts toward three main areas of child safety: bike, car, and water.

Bike Safety: Teaching practice basic safety practices, such as wearing a helmet, obeying safety signs, using hand signals, and riding with traffic.
Car Safety: Educate the importance of regular and proper use of safety belts, car safety seats, and booster seats.
Water Safety: Inform the community of the dangers of being around any body of water without proper supervision, precautions, safety equipment, and training.

Childhood injuries in these three areas typically can be prevented through education and proper use of safety equipment. With Key Clubbers working together with safety organizations and agencies to educate communities, we can make a difference and ensure a safer future for children.

Child Safety Organizations and Agencies

Boost America
www.boostamerica.org

Buckle Up America
www.buckleupamerica.org

Traffic Safety Kids Page
www.nysgtsc.state.ny.us/kids.htm#top

American Red Cross
www.redcross.org

Canadian Red Cross
www.redcross.ca

Caribbean Nations: The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
www.ifrc.org

US National SAFE KIDS Campaign
www.safekids.org

US National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) www.cdc.gov/ncipc/

Safe Kids Canada
www.safekidscanada.ca

Water Awareness in Residential Neighborhoods (WARN) Program
www.warnonline.org

Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute
www.bhsi.org

National Safety Belt Coalition
www.nsc.org/traf/sbc.htm

Children’s Miracle Network
www.cmn.org

SafetyBeltSafe U.S.A.
www.carseat.org

Kiwanis Pediatric Trauma Institute (KPTI)
www.kpti.org

Riley Children’s Hospital
www.rileyhospital.org

Risk Watch
www.nfpa.org/riskwatch/home.html

PARTNERS IN SERVICE

Seasons of Service

Each year Key Club International teams up with other organizations. The Major Emphasis Program focuses on a specific organization during each season of the year. The following partnerships for the Key Club International Major Emphasis Program are as follows:

UNICEF (Autumn)

UNICEF, the only organization of the United Nations dedicated exclusively to children, works with other United Nations bodies, governments, and non-governmental organizations to assist in children's needs through community-based-services in primary health care, basic education, and safe water and sanitation in more than 140 developing countries. UNICEF shares the Kiwanis family's global commitment to children and has provided its extensive resources and leadership to assist in the Worldwide Service Project to virtually eliminate Iodine Deficiency Disorders (IDD) from the globe.

UNICEF is much more than IDD. It is an organization dedicated to ensuring a brighter future for the children of the world. It focuses on an unlimited number of topics including:

Humanitarian programs around the world
Relief and recovery work in nations that have been devastated by natural disasters
Vitamin A global initiative
Convention of the Rights of the Child

To learn more about these programs and how issues facing children are being addressed, contact UNICEF and learn more. Key Clubs can actively participate in a wide assortment of programs and projects to help educate their communities and the world about issues facing children.

March of Dimes (Spring)

The March of Dimes was founded in 1938 by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help fight polio. Within only 12 years, the March of Dimes had amassed more than $1 million in funds that helped researchers identify all three polio viruses. In 1954, the March of Dimes ran field trials of the polio vaccine with more than 1.8 million school children participating. This began what would become their concerted effort to save babies from birth defects.

Key Club International began partnering with the March of Dimes in the 1960s by holding dances, carwashes, and bake sales to raise funds to further research in the medical field to help reduce birth defects. Key Club members around the world remember collecting dimes in hopes that someday children would be born free of birth defects.

Though times have changed since the inception of this organization, one thing remains the same: Each day young children are being born with birth defects. Some are easily prevented while others still remain a mystery to modern medicine. Key Club is proud to partner with the March of Dimes as we join together to save babies.

March of Dimes currently focuses on four main goals:

Reduce birth defects by 10 percent
Reduce infant mortality
Reduce low birthweight to no more than 5 percent of all live births
Increase the number of women who get prenatal care in the first trimester

Each year 750,000 corporations and individuals participate in WalkAmerica to benefit the March of Dimes. Key Club members can form teams and join their local March of Dimes Chapter in this endeavor. All contributions will remain at the local level to help with the fight against birth defects.

The March of Dimes also is promotes a Folic Acid/Vitamin B Campaign to help educate mothers and mothers-to-be about the importance of a daily dose of folic acid/vitamin B.

Together we can make a difference. Together we can ensure that babies are born healthy. Together we can reach out around the world and know that we are ensuring a safe tomorrow for children everywhere.

Read & Lead (Summer/Winter)

The Read & Lead" program is a one-on-one reading improvement program conducted by high school students to teach young emergent readers in the early years of elementary school to love and enjoy books.

Key Club members are asked to mentor a child by donating one hour of their time a week to read stories and books to an elementary school child who is struggling with the task of reading. By reading books and becoming the child's reading friend, the Key Club member becomes a positive role model and mentor.

Twenty percent of adults in the United States are illiterate. The number is growing. These adults can't even read to their own children. Educators tell us reading to children is the first step in learning to read. Key Club members are asked to help end this cycle by demonstrating the joy of reading as a "reading friend."

The Key Club motto is "Caring - Our Way of Life." What better way to show that Key Club cares than by helping a young child love and enjoy books and reading.