Circle K International is a collegiate volunteering service group. North Central College’s Circle K International branch is sponsored by Naperville Evening Kiwanis, the local Kiwanis club. Although the group is on the North Central College campus, its service is focused on the community – both international and local.
Circle K International’s vice president Katherine Madel has been working with the Kiwanis for eight years, through both high school and college. Madel, who loves volunteering, is a full-time student balancing two part-time jobs along with playing an active role with Circle K International.
Because North Central is in the heart of downtown Naperville, it makes it an ideal institution for Kiwanis to sponsor a Circle K International group. On Halloween, the group organized their annual “Trick or Treat for a Cause” event.
“Trick or Treat for a Cause” is pretty much self-explanatory: Members of Circle K International, and anyone who wants to participate, go to houses throughout the Naperville community to collect goods to donate. According to Madel, the cause for this “Trick or Treat for a Cause” event was a non-profit organization, Little Friends.
“We collect a bunch of nonperishables and donate them to Little Friends,” said Madel. The plan was for the group to trick-or-treat to upwards of 200 local houses of which they had previously sectioned off with flyers.
Madel says Circle K International is “always open for the public (to participate) because even though everyone can’t come to all of our meetings and events, there are a lot of people that are interested in what we do.”
Being a collegiate volunteering service group, getting students to get involved with Circle K International is an important task.
“(The group) does a little bit of everything,” says Madel. “Sometimes we use the outreach email, we pass out a lot of flyers, and a lot of it is word-of-mouth.”
Another service group on North Central College’s campus is Cardinals In Action, a student-led service group that co-sponsors “Trick or Treat for a Cause” with Circle K International.
The collaboration with Cardinals In Action, combined with a free pizza party in Koten Chapel, attracted many students to participate in the Halloween-themed event. “It’s our most successful event,” said Madel.
Next term Circle K International will be hosting a “For The Children” day camp, to promote service, reading, and general education of children” according to Madel. Earlier this year Circle K hosted a “Help For The Homeless” event, where volunteers walked around Chicago passing out brown-bag lunches to the homeless. Madel says she was surprised by how successful the turnout was for the “Help For The Homeless” event.
As far as other future events, Madel said that “it’s kind of up in the air right now, we decide term-by-term what we will be doing.”
Desury Paredes, former president of Circle K International at North Central, mentioned an interesting event that the group hosted during her tenure as president, “Taste of Circle K,” where Circle K set up table in White Activity Center like at the “Taste of Chicago.” Instead of food, groups and individuals were invited to participate in different service projects at each station.
Circle K International is a big organization – as noted in its name, it is much larger than its North Central chapter. With only a four-member board and not many other consistently active members, Circle K is one of the smallest groups at North Central College.
Paredes believes she’s in the minority as a person who has always loved community service. “People look at community service as something to put on their resume instead of a way to better themselves,” said Paredes.
Regardless, the growing number of people participating in Circle K’s events in Chicago and during Halloween offer hope that Circle K will continue growing and fostering a genuine love for service.
