High School Branch of Kiwanis, NHS Key Club is Always Volunteering, Doing Good in Community

I’m always impressed every time I see the Noblesville High School Key Club out volunteering for a cause.

I most recently caught up with the club members, who were serving pancakes and sausage at the annual Noblesville Kiwanis Sunrisers breakfast at the Boys & Girls Club of Noblesville, celebrating the winter youth basketball program.

Key Club continues to be one of the largest clubs at NHS with 125 current members and two faculty sponsors.

“We are a student-run club, with a leadership team of 16 students,” said Megan Obremski, NHS Biology teacher and a Key Club sponsor. “We focus on making our school and community better by volunteering our time in many different ways.”

How many hours a year do members volunteer? “Our members strive to volunteer at least 50 hours a year, but some volunteer over a hundred hours every year,” Obremski said. “While serving our school and community, our members make and grow friendships and enjoy helping others and giving back. At the end of the year, we have a celebration ceremony to come together and appreciate all we have done.”

There is a reason that we usually see the Key Club volunteering with a local Kiwanis Club. The Key Club is an international service organization and is the high school branch of Kiwanis International, as a service leadership program and as a Kiwanis Youth Program. Key Club is the largest and oldest service organization for teens. There is a callout at NHS at the beginning of each school year in August for students to learn more about the club.

“We really enjoy our partnership with the local Kiwanians,” Obremski said. “The Sunriser club is very active and asks us to help with many events. We always help with their pancake breakfasts; proceeds benefit various youth organizations in our community. We also helped with a Kite Flying event at Dillon Park, where kids could build and learn to fly their own kites.”

The Key Club also does food drives, partnered with the Hamilton County Harvest Food Bank, which distributes food throughout Hamilton County, and collects new and old shoes for Changing Footprints, a group that gives the usable shoes to places like Wheeler Mission and recycles the damaged shoes for playground subsurface, the teacher said.

“Many of our students get hours by tutoring other students (both in and out of school),” Obremski said. “Our kids also love volunteering at events at the local elementary schools, at school carnivals, read alouds, and even drawing inspirational chalk art on sidewalks before state testing.”

Obremski thinks it’s important to volunteer and give back to her community.

“I have always enjoyed volunteering my time to better my community,” she said. “I became a Key Club sponsor while teaching in Missouri, and when the opportunity arose to sponsor the club here at NHS, I was happy to get involved and continue leading the next generation in their love of service. I have been teaching at NHS for 10 years and have been a Key Club sponsor for most of that time, eight years I think.” First-year NHS social studies teacher Alyssa Muhvic just joined Obremski as co-sponsor.

Thanks Key Club and Kiwanians for always doing good in our community.

– Contact Betsy Reason at betsy@thetimes24-7.com.

Also, thanks to all who helped support the Boys & Girls Club of Noblesville with the purchase of breakfast tickets and donations to the club. About 800 tickets were purchased by the community for the breakfast, which raised about $5,000 for the club.  Save the date for these upcoming Boys & Girls Club events: TopGolf Tournament April 7 at TopGolf Fishers; Auxiliary Auction May 14 at Harbour Trees; Darlington Bed Race June 3 in downtown Noblesville; Deb Castino Memorial Golf Outing June 7 at Harbour Trees; and Boys & Girls Club of Noblesville Cornhole Tournament Aug. 5 at Forest Park.