The Value of A Kiwanis Scholarship Cannot be Measured in Dollars and Cents

by Helen Williams, Wheaton-Silver Spring Kiwanis President 

 

As I was eating lunch the other day, I mentioned around the table that the Kiwanis Club was getting ready to have a pancake breakfast to raise money for scholarships.  It was a very innocent statement and my lunch mates are accustomed to hearing me talk about club activities.  What was unusual though was when one of the Coordinators spoke up and said that's how my twin sister and I got enough money to go to college.  We had two older brothers who were already in college to become a doctor and the other an engineer.  My dad and mom had told us that they would try to come up with the tuition but that we might have to wait a year and work to help out.

 

What an eye opener that was!  My sister and I decided we would get part time jobs babysitting and doing odd jobs as well as, getting our good grades up to great and maybe we could get scholarships to help with the tuition.  We really got spurred on when we got accepted at colleges and there was just no way we were could wait while all our friends were going off to school after graduation.  We checked on all the scholarships in the guidance office and found out what our respective colleges could do to assist us.  Then, I will never forget when dad came to us just a month before we were to pay the college bursar and said that we needed $500.00 more and that he had borrowed all he could.  He did say that he had heard from a co-worker that the Kiwanis Club in Columbus (Ohio) was seeking applications for scholarships and he had asked him to see if he would get us the paperwork.

 

Well she said, you better believe we worked on those applications and filled out every question.  I told them in the essay section how helping other people solve problems and understand their behavior(s) would be my goal Then, with a smile, she said look at me now, that's what my job has been for almost forty years.  You see, I got a notice from the Kiwanis Club that they wanted to interview me to ask questions about the program that I wanted to enter.  After, the Club President talked to me, he turned around and told my father that he was a lucky man and then he handed me a scholarship for check for $500.00. He said that helping people is what the Kiwanis members do and that he felt I would represent them well.

 

My whole family was happy and excited that the "twins" would be going to college and on the day my father mailed the tuition check to Northwestern, he asked what I had learned by having to work and apply for scholarships.  In a convoluted way that teenagers think and talk, I told him that if something is really important then working for it makes it more meaningful-that I would never forget that going to college to help people was the main reason that I had been selected to receive the money and that I would make sure the Kiwanis Club would be paid back over and over again when I graduated.  My dad seemed really pleased and on graduation day-he asked if I remembered my pledge about scholarships-it's not about the money but how you help people-money is just paper-dollars and cents-it is how you get it and how you use it that counts.

 

How many Key Club members or recipients of Kiwanis Club scholarships really understand that the money is only the vehicle-it's what you do to repay their faith in you to meet their mission of volunteering to help children and communities change for the better.  The Wheaton-Silver Spring Club has a list of scholarship recipients who are in the process of meeting the Kiwanis mission.  See the list below:  

 

2010    Bruk Eshete                                Stevenson University                                        1500.00  Scholarship

2010    Muhammed  Ibrahim               University of Maryland                                     1500.00  Scholarship

2009    Stacy Murielle Biloa                  University of Maryland                                     1000.00  Scholarship

2009    Ashley Dwumfuor                     McDaniel College                                               1500.00  Scholarship

2009    Kevin Garzon                              University of Maryland                                     1500.00  Scholarship

2009    Amali Panakure                         University of Maryland                                      1500.00  Scholarship

2008    Marilyn Romero                        Dickinson College                                                1500.00  Scholarship

2007    Joseph Darko                             Penn State College                                              1000.00  Scholarship

2006    Cesar C.D. Baeto                       University of Maryland Baltimore                    1000.00  Scholarship

2006    Maria Cosio                                University of Maryland                                      1000.00  Scholarship

2006    Lizaeleen Fel Valle-Flores        University of Maryland                                       1000.00  Scholarship