FAQ
Q: What does an Aktion Club do?
A: An Aktion Club performs a variety of services for the community and cooperating agency. It conducts fund-raisers such as car washes, paper drives, and recycling projects to raise money for needs in the community.
Aktion Club members perform a variety of community services, such as environmental projects, park beautification, food drives, nursing home visitations, and assisting Kiwanis clubs with their projects.
Aktion Clubs also take time out for fun! Aktion members visit zoos, go to sporting events, and visit museums, among many other activities. They play as hard as they work. If there’s an Aktion Club in your town, you can find its members anywhere there’s service to be rendered or fun to be had.
Q: Who Sponsors an Aktion Club?
A: These clubs are sponsored by a Kiwanis club, sometimes in cooperation with a local agency, for citizens who live with developmental disabilities. An Aktion Club can also be sponsored by a group of Kiwanis clubs or a whole division (Kiwanis clubs within an area), or a Kiwanis club may wish to co-sponsor an Aktion Club with a Key Club (high school students) or a Circle K club (college students.)
The success of the Aktion Club depends on the involvement of the sponsoring Kiwanis club and the support of an agency serving adults with these disabilities (if an agency is present.)
Q: What is the cost of chartering a new Aktion Club?
A: The chartering fee is US $460 and must be paid at the time of chartering. The fee includes the membership pins, cards, handbooks, certificiates, a gong, gavel and banner.
Q: What does the club get for the $5.00 per member fee?
A: After Kiwanis International processes the paperwork for a new club, a Certificate of Charter is sent to the Kiwanis advisor of the new club. Then, 4-6 weeks after receiving the charter (or after International's receipt of the annual membership fees), several additional items are mailed to the Aktion Club's Kiwanis a dvisor - a sponsor patch for the Kiwanis club's banner, and membership cards, handbooks , and pins for the Aktion Club members . Please be aware that it will be 4-6 weeks after the charter has been received by the club that the second package containing the cards, pins and handbooks should arrive. Use this time for new clubs to order banners and to schedule a Charter Presentation Ceremony and for existing clubs to prepare a New Member and Officer Induction Ceremony.
Q: What are the benefits of Aktion Club?
A: Individuals who live with disabilities often have many talents but little opportunity to develop or apply them. These special citizens have few chances to interact socially and sometimes little opportunity to function in society. Too often, they are isolated and dependent when they could be making valuable contributions to themselves and to the world around them.
History
George D. “Jake” Swartout, 1988-89 Governor of the Florida District, organized the first Aktion Club, for adults who live with a disability, in Putnam County, Florida, in 1987. With the assistance of fellow Kiwanians, Ed Brooks and Dick Wittner, the Aktion Club concept spread throughout the Florida District and, by world-of-mouth, throughout the Kiwanis world. Aktion Club became an official Sponsored Program of Kiwanis International on October 1, 2000.
Today, in addition to the US, there are clubs in Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Canada, Jamaica, and Malaysia.