Greet­ings, Fel­low (e)Tigers,

Wel­come to the Eye of the Tiger eKi­wa­nis Club for the 2019–20 Kiwa­nis year. Thank you to return­ing mem­bers for the part that you played in open­ing 434 new clubs in the 2018–19 Kiwa­nis year and 411 new clubs in the 2017–18 Kiwa­nis year and also achiev­ing net growth in that year. Thanks to you, we have strength­ened the orga­ni­za­tion that we dear­ly love, helped oth­ers learn how to open new clubs, and brought in many new mem­bers of diverse ages, eth­nic­i­ties, and gen­ders to serve the chil­dren of the world. And wel­come to our new members.

We owe a big thanks to Imme­di­ate Past Pres­i­dent Gary Levine for his out­stand­ing lead­er­ship dur­ing our first year of exis­tence and to the oth­er offi­cers, Sec­re­tary Alan Guire and Trea­sur­er, Valar­ie Brown-Klin­gel­hoe­fer; and Board Mem­bers Kat­ri­na Baranko, Bob Larsen, and Car­son Schreiber for their lead­er­ship. Thank you also to our Kiwa­nis Inter­na­tion­al Imme­di­ate Past Pres­i­dent, Sage, and Head Tiger Jim Rochford for his always wise lead­er­ship, coun­sel, and inspi­ra­tion. And thank you and kudos to our cur­rent Assis­tant Sec­re­tary, Julia Levine, for devel­op­ing this newsletter.

I hope that you are famil­iar with our fan­tas­tic web­site devel­oped by Past Pres­i­dent Gary Levine: Kiwanistiger.com and with the field guide on the site. It lists our goals:

• Open a new Kiwa­nis club at the site of the Inter­na­tion­al Convention,
• Train Kiwa­ni­ans how to open new Kiwa­nis clubs, and
• Per­pet­u­ate and con­tin­ue to devel­op the Eye of the Tiger new club open­ing method­ol­o­gy honed in the 2017–18 Kiwa­nis year.

And, of course, part of our mis­sion from our very first meet­ing is to devel­op lead­ers at dis­trict and inter­na­tion­al lev­els in the cul­ture of grow­ing Kiwanis.

Toward that end, we agreed at our first board meet­ing of this year to add mem­bers to our club in the North Amer­i­can dis­tricts in which we do not cur­rent­ly have mem­bers: Kansas, Ken­tucky-Ten­nessee, Min­neso­ta-Dako­tas, Mon­tana, Nebras­ka-Iowa, New York, Ohio, Pacif­ic North­west, South­west, Texas-Okla­homa, Utah-Ida­ho, West­ern Cana­da, and Wis­con­sin-Upper Michi­gan. So if you know like­ly mem­bers from those dis­tricts, please bring them into the club. We also need mem­bers from around the world; we are for­tu­nate to have Richard Lim of Malaysia as one of our mem­bers, and we want to add mem­bers from Asia Pacif­ic, Europe, South/Central Amer­i­ca, and Africa. We are ask­ing every cur­rent mem­ber to recruit one new mem­ber into the Eye of the Tiger eKi­wa­nis Club.

Many coun­tries around the world cel­e­brate a har­vest fes­ti­val by giv­ing thanks. I under­stand that in Malaysia, the cel­e­bra­tion is in May; in Cana­da, it is in Octo­ber; in the U.S. it is in Novem­ber. At Thanks­giv­ing time, I think of all the things for which I am thank­ful. I am thank­ful for each and every one of you and your self­less giv­ing of time, tal­ent, and trea­sure to open new Kiwa­nis clubs. We must keep Kiwa­nis strong and vital to serve the chil­dren of the world.

Let’s grow!

Grate­ful­ly,

Barb Thomp­son

2019–20 Pres­i­dent

Eye of the Tiger eKiwanis